Interconnetcs (Any opinions?)

Looks like you should change your supplier. You can buy 0.5mm 99.99 Silver a metre at a time for £1.73 plus VAT at Wires. Even cheaper, if you buy in bulk.

http://www.wires.co.uk/acatalog/si_bare.html

Never bought any myself, but can't see them saying it's 99.99, if it's not.

Graham.

 

don't be fooled by the % purity its only ever measured at the ingot ....

I think you'll find that if you were to build cables the cost once shipped and in your hand bears little resemblance to the quoted ...if you trust the PO then thats fine ....but if you buy a 100g reel and it goes missing and you've not taken adequate measures to insure ..you can't even claim the £30 on the standard parcel

So yes your £1.73 looks very good on the face of it .....in reality it could cost you a great deal more .... ie a reorder and a loss of the original ...but what are the odds of lossing anything in the post .....who knows how luck do you feel?

I can't understand why people have to buy ready made cables ....when you can build a perfectly good cable for under £20

spool of 0.3mm copper wire £5
4x rca plugs £1 each
a sleeve and heat shrink say £2
a fancy braided jacket £5......still less than £20

a little application and study £0

you can even buy crimp rca's so you don't have to have solder skills.

The point is if you build your own you know the provenance of the materials ... and its not cost you an arm or a leg

theres nothing mystic involved ....

you can only choose five or six design types ....anyone of average competance and intellegence can build a cable that will rival anything upto £100

you can even try the diy designs I've posted in the diy section

 

Zanash. Your prices are out by miles. I still make some money on my cables and i se 99.99 pure silver wire (any more than 4 nines is a fabrication as any producer only guarantees 4 nines). To say that if there is something fishy if the cables sell for less than £100 is quite frankly flirting with libel laws. By association, the inference is that my cables are not as described and that is simply not true and i would take anyone to task who suggested such.
I know this is not in the trade section and i am not trying to plug my own cables, but i could not let this one go.

John

 

Hmmmm - John I wonder are your actually in a position to show us any laboratory test data on your cables that confirms to us that your wire IS in fact 99.99 ? and that every cable you produce retains that level of purity ?

 

I don't think I said that as such ......but let me try to clear that up

moon has a point ...more later

if you look at a number of ebay adds ..especially those from the far east ....I'm certain that you as a cable purveyors know how much materials and builds cost.

silver for those that don't know comes in many types

the most common 925....that is 92.5% silver the remaining being copper or other base metal ....the world market price [at the time of writing this is £276.60 /kg plus vat as an ingot ..rolled and anneled to 0.5mm raises it to £450 plus vat approx depending on your supplier [they will vary depending quite when the purchased on the world market and their profit margins]

so we know that 0.5mm of silver 1m length weighs in at approx 2g

therefore a mid range price 1m of 925 will cost approx £2.30 plus vat

therefore one stereo pair of 1m ic's will require a minimum of 4m or £8.12 plus vat of silver ....[assuming a simple twisted pair]

As nobody should be using 925 as an ic we need to look at higher purity silvers....

4n or 99.99% will cost about 2.5 - 3 times 925 [to keep the math simple] ie your 4m of will cost £30ish plus vat .....

5n should cost about 6 - 8 times 4n [if you can find any where selling it] ie 4m of 5n will cost in the order of £200 ...

these figures do not consider bulk purchase or transient discounts loss leaders special deals etc and are not meant to be regarded as more than a rough guide ....

I don't pretend these to be the cheapest prices on the interweb just a rough guide a rule of thumb etc !

for instance 4n can be purchased for as little as £1.50/m but this imo is not its true price for what ever reason. Even so thats still £6 for 4m length uninsulated.


So lets consider some adds on fleabay I shan't include john and chris's [though I think you may need to consider a little chemistry, as silver oxide is rather rare, its silver sulphides and especially silver nitrate that cause the blackening and tarnish. Which coincidentally are nearly as conductive as silver !

item number 220231064414 or 220185066706 or 300156822611

just three examples there are many more ...these just jumped out at me on a quick trawl.


make your own mind up

to put this in perspective ....

I can't build an ic for these cost out of copper let alone silver and thats without adding a profit margin !

So are these silver cables made from 925 ?

or are they silverplated copper ?

I've no idea, but the final costs may suggest this maybe ... hence my healthy dose of sceptisism .

At this point I'd just like to point out that I have no axe to grind and the motivation is to show that not everything can be taken at face value .....

certainly john and chris ic's have not made there way onto my gear so I can't comment on sound but they seem nicely put together and use good materials ... so I hope they don't feel tared with the same brush ...if they do I apologise they weren't meant as the target of my ire.

Moon raise a good point.....assaying costs about £30 a shot so all metal dealers normally quote a batch assay figure taken from the ingot...this was therefore calculated before the metal was draw to make wire ....

Drawing wire can introduce impurites especially iron and ferrous oxides, depending on the type of equipment used ....obviously maintaining the purity will have a cost implication.

if needed most reputable cable dealers can obtain the batch assay certification ..from their reputable supplier.

It seems clear to me that some far easten cables claiming 4-5-6n etc cannot be .....I hope that the above illistrates why I'm sceptical of some of the quoted figures ...

this is not confined to the far east ....I had a run in with a chap selling neotech cables claiming 99.99999% in the US...he said he took the figures of the neotech website ..which guess what ....they turned out to be a typo !!

So don't believe all you read ......you can include this as well !!!