Warm, fullbodied, smooth, and transparent

Nice equipment...its worth spending the time you are, in order to get him the right IC. Given the Pass being (i recall) fairly detailed, smooth as a class A amp, and (i am guessing) the Cambridge is fairly straightforward...you'll want a cable that maximizes the delivery of information thru to the Pass...and maintains a fairly natural tonality. For value for money and excellent results, you may wish to try the new Sablon Audio Panatella...see the reviews on Six Moons, Jeff Day, etc. At their price, they will easily compete with and many would say better my old Transparent Reference at a third the price.

Seabreeze, You need to indicate what you're willing to spend on the IC. Choices are limited, if little.

If around $500, my advice is to use that to buy a used Rega Apollo CD player, or another brand known for being smooth and natural sounding.

Cardas Golden Cross is famous for warming up and taming bright systems.

In general, stick with copper and stay away from cables that utilize silver.

For this situation and those values, you'd be hard-pressed to get better for the money than the Audio Advisor's AudioQuest Black Mamba II for $99.95 for a 1M pair.

I have many kinds of interconnects, and a couple of types that I like better, but the Black Mamba has going for it the things you were talking about. It's monocrystal copper with six nines purity, so it is uncommonly smooth and organic. It is terminated with *very nice* AQ silver-plated RCAs that run $40/set on their own. It's very smooth and musical, but resolution is good as well, and unfailingly musical.

If you want to spend a little more and get more speed and transparency, try to score some Zu Wylde on eBay through the zu_promos vendor. You get the cables with free shipping and Zu's 60-day trial period. The Wyldes were a $300-400/pair interconnect that's been discontinued. I have two pair in my #1 system, and in fact these replaced Kimber Heroes, which in turn replaced the AQ Black Mambas.

You can go to Audio Advisor and buy Black Mamba II's on any day in any quantity in any length, they break in quickly and easily, and always sound musical. But if you want a little more clarity, detail, and dynamics without introducing harshness, the Wyldes will do that, but you have to wait for the right auction to come up and jump on it. Also, the Wyldes require more burn-in; they start edgy and require a couple weeks of sending signal through them constantly to smooth out and come into focus. But once you do you'll probably have an interconnect you won't think about replacing for a long long time.

Seabreeze, See the new thread "Golden Reference or Golden Cross?"

Thanks to all who have contributed. Presently doing do diligence on the recommendations. Ultimately hope to narrow it down to a few, and then buy them here, try them out on the system, the winner will stay, and the others will get sold off. Think that will be the best way to approach this project to get the system to match synergistically.