Hey!
EDS, that is a nice system you've got there.
I see you are looking for new cable. I'm sure that you don't to spend lots of money for those mumbo jumbo cables right? Well, than welcome to club. It this your first DIY project? If so don't worry making cable is easy.
There are couple of design you could do. When I set out to build my own cable for my system I was looking into VH Audio site
http://www.venhaus1.com/diysilverinterconnects.html This very simple design.... of cause you don't have to use silver a good copper would do to.
But I didn't go for it. I went for another design. Multi-conductors, paralle run flat, in between teflon tape.
Well, what is this reminded you of?
Anyway, the copper wire is from Vampire 26ga. 6N coated (magnet wire) This wire is now getting much more epensive and harder to find now.
And I was pretty lucky to get a hold of 2 rolls of clear 3M teflon tape. These are expensive if you buy them new from retailer. I only have some left but I do have couple of rolls of NOS mil-spec thicker brown teflon tapes, but I might need to add some adhisive to it. Than Bullet Plug copper completed the picture
I choose this design for it... first for the simplicity of it and low capacitance, the 26ga wire is big enough to carry good voltage but not too big to the point where the so called skin effect kick in. My other consideration is the 29ga. The Bullet plug is simple and work great. You could use the packaging tape but the teflon will have much less static charge storage.
Like you I have an all tubed system... except the CDP and the DAC. The cable sound great on my system. I used to have MIT T2, Kimber KC, cheap Audio Quest, and of cause some Monster
The improvement I got from my DIY cable is clearly better!
I haven't try them in other system, especially ss system yet. And I haven't compare them with more expensive brand name cable. But all I know is that they are great in my system right now
As I mentioned before the Vampire wire is getting much more expensive now. The alternative would be Cardas magnet wire 29ga... it is smaller, will be harder to work with and you will need a few more conductors run with this. And as for the teflon.... well, that would be the hardest one to get
I guess you could use packaging tape. The other trick is to use 1 or 2 more conductors on the negative/return side.... my latest set used this and the sound seem to be better
And if the cables will be longer than 1 meter you might need to shield them. I just use kitchen aluminum foil Reynold brand sound best.... just kidding
You could see some more picture in my gallery.
BTW you could just tape the tape to the floor and run the wires with your hand on to the tape instead of stringing them like I did. Also, there is a link of which converted the ga. to mm so you could calculate how many conductors you will need. I think my cable is about 21ga total per pole.
Well, have fun and keep us posted on this. I'm sure after you finished your first set of cable you won't be buying anymore of those $$$$$$ brand name cable again like me!
Take care,
Buddy
