Silver Wire Cable in a Tonearm Rewire?
Don’t be misled by specifications – we’ve tried PTFE, silver plate, solid silver, etc. Getting silver wire cable to sound right is not easy and there are many silver wires that may sound transparent but also tend to be overly bright and incapable of producing low bass.
Silver is an important aspect but only one of many other aspects. On it’s own, silver wire is no guarantee of quality. For example, silver is only 5% more conductive than copper whereas the Harmony plugs we offer are 4 times as conductive as commonly used brass but nobody asks “what are the phono plugs made of?”. The fact is that there are critical elements of cable design that are not talked about and which have 10 times the influence on the sound than say PTFE insulation.
Without meaning to be vague, the information on the make up of our cables is largely confidential and not particularly meaningful as it’s almost impossible to pick out a high performance wire on such things as silver, PTFE, coaxial, balanced, etc. People can guess at the things that really make a wire tick but we don’t advertise them as it would give away too much to our competitors and not mean a great deal to the average person. At the end of the day one has to make a choice based on reputation and results rather than specifications which even the experts don’t fully understand.
In summary, our view is that a well designed copper wire will outperform a poor silver one but a well specified silver wire will outperform a good copper one. Lastly, it’s important to realise that although almost all silver in Hi-Fi is 99.99% pure, there is a vast difference in the way the silver has been processed. This alone affects the measured resistance, but is of minor significance compared to the differences in sound quality. Well processed silver is expensive as it takes real know-how, much longer production times and the right equipment.