Anyone reterminated a Valhalla?


Looking into buying a long length of it and halving it.

Nordost won't reterminate Valhalla. Why not? Something special about it or marketing ploy?
jbatlanta
My understanding is that Nordost WILL reterminate their cables! But they will not cut lengths. So if you want to reterminate your I/C's from RCA to XLR or vice versa, or your speaker cables from spade to "Z-plug" (their much improved variant on a standard banana plug) Nordost will do this. The newer Valhallas have a much heavier spade, which has a set screw that allows the removal of the spade, exposing a "Z-plug", so that you can use either termination with their new style of speaker cable connector.

You can tell if it is a legitimate retermination, by checking for shrink wrap over the terminations that specifically says "Valhalla", NOT "Flatline Cable". The Valhalla shrink wrap boot is only available from the factory, when they reterminate. A cut Valhalla cable, reterminated elsewhere, will have the "Flatline Cable" shrink wrap termination, which is sold to sources outside the factory. VALHALLA CABLES SHOULD NEVER BE CUT TO MAKE SHORTER LENGTHS!!!! Other than the fraud issues mentioned earlier, cutting a Valhalla cable will probably degrade performance, due to the strict matching and quality control used in the manufacturing process of this exceptional cable.

To add to the confusion, Nordost made a very small number of early Valhalla I/C's that did NOT use the Valhalla boot, for legal reasons that I will not get into. Nordost will also deny that these exist, but they do! No quality difference, but stay away from the unbooted 1 meter lengths, as these are most likely to be cut cables, as previously described. Don't expect to find these unbooted longer lengths, as only a handful were made. But if you do, these should be sold at a discount.
I was going to suggest Drew also--his Audiogon member name is Drubrew. He makes his own cables and reterminates all brands of cables--very meticulous work.
Interesting thread as I had a similar situation with a 32' pair of NBS Statement II XLR. All was fine except for a very slight middle frequency hum. NBS said they "can not" reterminate this but was more than happy to "upgrade" to a new Omega cable for a lot more $$. I said forget it and sent the cable to Drew at Moon Audio who did a phenomenol job of taking the cable down to 14' (with no hum) and then making me (2) 6' pairs and 2 (3) pairs. It is not factory work but who cares as I now have my entire system using this cable and it is outstanding. I do not imagine changing this for years and years ..... if ever! So you might want to look up Drew at Moon Audio.
John
They used to reterminate the Valhalla's but what a lot of people were doing was buying real long cables and having them reterminated into many smaller runs. Selling the left overs and usually making money and flooding the market with used valhallas(driving there residual value even lower- which is good and bad at the same time). I think they charged a nominal fee of like $60 to reterminate valhalla's. I have friend here at the 'gon who bought a 30' pair(used) and had them made into 10 one meter pairs- sold them all individually- made $5k+ on the deal. It stinks for people now but I can understand why they did it