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Aftermarket tonearm wires

Ethernet might be interesting to try but after replacing far too many of them with a break in them I wouldn't want to risk it. Many Ethernet cables don't use the best copper internally and it's often very fragile. One reason I'm not to keen on using it for anything. Sticking with a known quantity like Cardas cable would make a lot more sense if pricing is reasonable and the rewire is truly needed.
 
I assume by needledrops the poster (who asked why no one had thought to do a comparison before and after) meant recording, not just listening. Our memories are so fallible that any claims based on remembering how something sounded should be taken with a ton of salt. But even recording may not offer anything better unless the recording is at least as good as the original signal. And people have every reason to doubt if many recordings are actually sufficient to the task -- the whole digital vs analogue furor reflects such differences, and even in the analogue world, you'd need a pretty fine tape recorder to be confident that you were really hearing the differences that you think you are. So I'm amazed at the number of people who apparently are confidently rating sounds based on what comes out of their laptops.
Of course, if you do or don't hear what you expect, your tendency to blame the recording probably increases...
 
I once noticed a decent Yamaha tt for sale somewhere for 25.00 so I bought it. Don't remember model (it was about 30 years ago), but it was equipped with the usual counter-weights and looked upper tier. Put a decent cart on it, set it up, and had a listen (my everyday table was an Oracle with FR-14 and Dynavector Ruby). Played it through my system which consisted of a pair of Boothroyd Stewart Meridian 105 monos and Kef 105.2. Well it had no bottom end, no top end, and the midrange sounded like somebody had their AM radio on far far away. It was actually slow and sluggish, and I don't mean platter speed. How it managed to slow down my amp is a mystery to me. So I had my first lesson on signal passing through tarnish. When I stripped a bit of tonearm wire, it was as dark as an old penny.

If it's not shiny and bright, replace it.
 
Cylontymany said:
What about silver tonearm wire? Isnt thar better than copper?
Click to expand...
It's not a far better conductor, but imo the lower the voltage, the greater the benefit in gaining the extra performance silver offers. Oxidized silver actually increases conductance, however silver sulfide is as bad or worse than tarnished copper.
 
I rewire all my vintage arms. I use silver plated copper wire. You get the best of both worlds. I figure if the wire is 50yrs old it's time for new.
 
I remember a lot of discussion about the tonearm wire characteristics when using low output moving coil cartridges. I have an M. A. Cotter step-up transformer and used to hear lots of praise for the silver wiring on the outpur side (with an implied expectation that there were better- and much worse - tonearm wiring options feeding the inputs of the Cotter). More recently I have heard that the silver output wire needs to go, and that there were a different set of better- and much worse - tonearm wiring options feeding the inputs of the Cotter.

Are low output cartridges a different animal, or was this all just audiophile mumbo-jumbo?
 
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