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I had tried quite a few well liked value cables. Some that did not stick long were Zu Mission, an early version of Reality cables, some earlier Anti-cables, and a few more I can't recall... And ones that stayed in a while, a DIY design using ethernet wires, Decware Styx, and Morrow's second to the top model. Then I fell into a really nice price on some used Synergistic Research Copper Elements with their special ground tech and sound tuning "bullets." The bullets were pretty powerful, each one giving the wires different feels, from more open and clear to more warm/bassy. They were the most revealing cables I had tried in frequencies and speed, with the cleanest bullets, very good at fine information and space. But not quite right for me, I could not liven up the bass, being a little soft and lean for my setup.
About then, I stumbled into the NOS WE tinned copper wire trend, and liked things I heard with one 16 gauge wire... lively, textured and fun in the mids, while not being so flavored as to sound too fake to me. Trouble was, that little wire could not give me the bass I needed. So I tried two together, and then three. Three 16s brought the bass into the mix pretty well, but 2 and 3 wires together made the mids progressively hard, making the initial mid magic from a single wire too concentrated and dense.
So liking one WE, I took a cue from the SR Elements, and decided to mix wires with the sonic character of each in mind, trying for a really good sonic blend I thought the mix might give. For size, like finding the WE wires too small/lean, I had found big wires like Decware Styx and some others too big, making the mids a little too dense and hard, and the bass too big and dominant. The happy medium here, between the 8 gauge wires and 16, that was quite a spread... I decided to start with 13-12 gauge...1 - WE 16, 1 - "polished" 20 gauge soft annealed pure silver wire in over-sized teflon tube, and I think an 18 gauge (maybe 16?) soft annealed pure copper in oversized teflon, also smoothed and polished with fine steel wool.
As luck would have it, this was quite good here, so I started playing with the number of wire crossings to tighten/clean up the sound by sound....not really twists, as my fav, if I am recalling correctly, had wire crosses something like every 10-12". Once I found the geometry I liked best, I tried some odd wires in teflon tube, and I ended up with a subtle improvement in the finest stuff...I am thinking it might be a 28 gauge titanium plated copper wire...
In the system at the time these cables were overall notably better than the SR Research, quite close in fine detail and space revelation, and with good spectral and speed balances from bass to highs. Sorry I am vague about the exact wire and geometry, but from looking at emails, this was about 9 years ago, bringing memory into question, and the orders are so old, the links to exactly what they were are not working...
Interestingly to me... though I have had UPOCC silver and copper wires, and some Duelund interpretations of WE wire for years, these are so good here, I have never felt compelled to take the time to make an upgraded version.
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