After five long years I finally received another run of custom lacquered litz cable from Draka France, and am producing interconnects again. Individual cable strands are high purity copper with heavy silver plating and individually lacquered before being wound into an equi-length litz braid and jacketed in PTFE. Once trimmed to length and tinned, individual cables are immersed in liquid nitrogen and subjected to multiple timed short duration high power variable frequency RF pulse trains that fully anneal the silver strike, and drive impurities at the silver to copper interface into the copper core via solid state diffusion. Once stabilized, the treated individual cable leads are carefully woven into a three wire braid with spacing optimized to minimize stray capacitance. A key component is the introduction of a third ‘null’ lead that acts to attenuate RF pickup and minimize capacitance. RCA connectors are US made Switchcraft, with epoxy potting for strain relief. The resulting cable is extremely neutral and delivers a clear natural sound. This can be attributed to the ultra low impedance and minimal capacitance (guaranteed to be below 48pF / meter).
I have built and delivered about 100 pairs of these over the past 10 years, with zero returns or complaints.
There are some nice things said about them here: http://www.glowinthedarkaudio.com/thoughts-opinions.html
Price for a 1 meter pair is still only $98, including free shipping to US addresses. You can spend more, but you won’t get more…
Selling standard configurations on eBay here: https://www.ebay.com/itm/224858215845
Custom lengths and configurations by request.
Accounting for fixturing and termination losses, I estimate that I have enough raw cable to build out approx. 30 standard pairs of cable, and this is very likely the last batch of cable that I will receive – US manufacturers simply have no interest in small custom batch orders, and Draka France has such a backlog that they aren’t even accepting new custom orders.
Foxtrot 9 Audio 