Dr. Ears
Super Member
One of the biggest mistakes that I see in high-end audio is a small fortune being spent on equipment and then using poor interconnects.
Price is not a good judge of performance, in my critical listening tests of RCA plugs, I found those expensive "heavy metal" CNC'd
RCA plugs actually degrade your signal.
A best buy in RCA plugs are Keith Eichmann's new line of RCA plugs, Keith was the original designer of the highly regarded
Eichmann silver bullets, all of which are of a very minimalist design.
His new line of RCA plugs starts at $30 for a set of 4, which feature silver plated copper and are my favorite for SS equipment, for tubed gear, I would go with his top of the line Absolute Harmony, which feature pure silver and go for $87 dollars for a set of 4.
I named my custom designed single ended interconnects, the "Quantum Interconnects" because I cannot explain the science of what makes them sound so good.
They feature a four nines silver ribbon wire with a natural silk dielectric embedded with oil at high pressures for the positive lead only.
For the ground, I use a solid copper wire with an organic cotton dielectric embedded with oil at high pressure.
CRITICAL: I keep them in separate sleeves meeting only at the KLEI RCA plugs.
All of the ingredients to make these are available at Parts Connexion.
An old vacuum tube customer of mine, who I had sold some demo interconnects years ago, asked me to make him some new sets after trying over $10,000 worth of fancy interconnects. He went with the old pure silver Eichmann RCA plugs for his SS MAC rack, which cost him $145 per set and he wanted the heaviest gauge of the pure silver ribbon wire, which runs $44 a foot.
Pictured are a set of my "Quantum Interconnects" with Keith Eichmann's BOTL RCA plugs, I just made myself 4 new sets to celebrate my acquiring my first piece of MAC equipment, the 1700 and my recently acquired Japanese version of the FX Audio.
I love the hybrid sound of SS MAC gear combined with the $68.49 little FX Audio preamp / tube buffer.
If, you are going to buy the FX Audio, make sure you buy the Japanese version because it is the only version, which features a toggle switch, which enables you to switch between zero gain and minus 6 db's of gain. The Chinese version goes for less than half the cost of the Japanese version, but has one pot controlling both the gain and volume, I could not find a setting I liked with the Chinese version and often use the minus 6 db setting.
Price is not a good judge of performance, in my critical listening tests of RCA plugs, I found those expensive "heavy metal" CNC'd
RCA plugs actually degrade your signal.
A best buy in RCA plugs are Keith Eichmann's new line of RCA plugs, Keith was the original designer of the highly regarded
Eichmann silver bullets, all of which are of a very minimalist design.
His new line of RCA plugs starts at $30 for a set of 4, which feature silver plated copper and are my favorite for SS equipment, for tubed gear, I would go with his top of the line Absolute Harmony, which feature pure silver and go for $87 dollars for a set of 4.
I named my custom designed single ended interconnects, the "Quantum Interconnects" because I cannot explain the science of what makes them sound so good.
They feature a four nines silver ribbon wire with a natural silk dielectric embedded with oil at high pressures for the positive lead only.
For the ground, I use a solid copper wire with an organic cotton dielectric embedded with oil at high pressure.
CRITICAL: I keep them in separate sleeves meeting only at the KLEI RCA plugs.
All of the ingredients to make these are available at Parts Connexion.
An old vacuum tube customer of mine, who I had sold some demo interconnects years ago, asked me to make him some new sets after trying over $10,000 worth of fancy interconnects. He went with the old pure silver Eichmann RCA plugs for his SS MAC rack, which cost him $145 per set and he wanted the heaviest gauge of the pure silver ribbon wire, which runs $44 a foot.
Pictured are a set of my "Quantum Interconnects" with Keith Eichmann's BOTL RCA plugs, I just made myself 4 new sets to celebrate my acquiring my first piece of MAC equipment, the 1700 and my recently acquired Japanese version of the FX Audio.
I love the hybrid sound of SS MAC gear combined with the $68.49 little FX Audio preamp / tube buffer.
If, you are going to buy the FX Audio, make sure you buy the Japanese version because it is the only version, which features a toggle switch, which enables you to switch between zero gain and minus 6 db's of gain. The Chinese version goes for less than half the cost of the Japanese version, but has one pot controlling both the gain and volume, I could not find a setting I liked with the Chinese version and often use the minus 6 db setting.