Duelund DCA 12ga Hookup Wire

I use the pure silver, single strand shielded from PartsConnexion:

https://www.partsconnexion.com/dh-labs-interconnect-wire-cable.html

However, it IS brittle. A few too many twists and it will break. Still, I haven't found anything I felt was cleaner sounding. 

Best,


Erik 

Duelund also has Silver wire . Any users experience?

I'd also run that question by grannyring here on Audiogon.

I made a set of balanced interconnects using WE 16ga wire and it sounded "thick" or a little too full to me.  I have since made balanced ICs using Duelund 20ga wire and I like the result.  There are many ways to do things but my suggestions are;

• Twist a pair of Duelund 20ga wires (that will attach to pins 2 and 3)
• cover the twisted pair of conductors with spacing material (I use noise-reducing techflex)
• Place a tinned copper braid shield over the conductors and spacing material
• Counter-spiral a generic stranded copper ground wire of at least 20ga (I use 18ga for 20ga conductors) outside of the shield
• Connect the generic ground wire to pins 1 at both ends
• Connect the shield to pin 1 at the source end only 
• Cover with techflex and heat shrink the ends
• I like Vampire XLR connectors for lower cost applications and Furutech 600-series connectors when spending more (my personal cables use the Furutech connectors).  Others have had good luck with Xhadow connectors.

Good luck

That Duelund vintage style and tone wire is just wonderful. I like it better than the Duelund silver as the tone and presentation is spot on for my tastes. Just a far less fussy wire than silver. We want our systems to play all our favorite recordings well, not just the great sounding recordings and the Duelund vintage wire helps us achieve this goal.

I use the Duelund vintage style wire everywhere in my rig. The 12 gauge makes great speaker cable for sure. I assume you twisted your runs?

Well to make a proper xlr cable you use two runs for pins 2 & 3 only. You twist these two runs and place them in a nice braided copper shield. The shield is formed/twisted into a wire at both ends and connected to pin 1.

Be sure you twist the two Duelund wires right up to the point they are soldered to pins 2 and 3. Run that twist as close as possible to the solder point. Also keep the that twisted braided shield that you formed into a wire as short as possible .... just long enough to solder properly onto pin 1.

I prefer the 20 and 16 gauge for ICs and would go no smaller. I like the 16ga better, but that is a subjective thing really. You get a tad more body and weight with the 16ga. 20 gauge also sounds fantastic and should be great on the dac connection. The Duelund wire is not as thick sounding as the Western Electric mentioned above making the use of 16ga very good on the ic.

@mitch2 Build is slightly more complex and if you read on this subject some feel it adds noise and some undesirable SQ issues. Others swear by it. Goodness, like all things in this passion, opinions are in great supply. I have not compared the two builds side by side and this is the only way to know. I will do so shortly.

I would love to hear Ralph of Atmasphere  chime in.