With all the cable rolling I've been doing lately with the Belden 8402 microphone cable interconnects, and the Western Electric WE16GA, I thought I should mention how handy Alan Kaftan's audiodharma Cable Cooker is for running in cables and getting them to sound their best.
That's Alan Kafton of Audio Excellence AZ, in the blue t-shirt between Dave Clark (Positive Feedback) and Yoshi Hontani (MuSon Project, Inc.).
I use my Cable Cooker all the time on cables when I'm reviewing, when building new cables, and running in pretty much all wire on them. Occasionally I'll go back and give my cables a tune-up conditioning session to keep them sounding their best.
Conditioning the Western Electric WE16GA on the Cable Cooker.
Just letting cables run-in by playing them doesn't even come close to the positive effects of conditioning them on the Cable Cooker.
Thomas Schick tonearms on the Garrard Project 2015.
I was doing some listening back & forth with the Woody SPU tonearm and my Schick tonearms, and the Woody SPU was schticking it to the Schicks. The Woody SPU tonearm was smoother, richer, and more natural sounding.
While I was pondering this, it dawned on me that I hadn't conditioned the wire in my Schick tonearms yet, and after a hand-slap to my forehead, I decided it was time to get busy and get it done.
Alan makes all kinds of specialty adapters for the Cable Cooker, so you can Cook just about anything with wire. As you might expect, one of those adapters is for conditioning tonearms ($125 USD), which is an often overlooked item for conditioning (ahem).
The adapter I have, that you see in the accompanying photos, is an old one I've had for years that I've pressed back into service. Alan's adapters are similar in concept, but of much higher quality than my adapter.
The adapter essentially turns the tonearm into 'interconnects' so that you can condition it on the Cable Cooker. On one end of the adapter is a pair of RCA plugs, and on the other end are phono cartridge pins that you plug into the headshell wires on the tonearm.
Adapter plugged into the headshell wires of the Schick graphite headshell.
I put the Schick graphite headshell on the Schick arm, plug the adapter 's pins into it headshell wires, and then plugged the adapter's RCAs into the outputs on the Cable Cooker (a nice arrangement because it conditions the headshell wires at the same time as the arm).
The RCA plug terminated flying leads from the Schick tonearm get plugged into the Cooker's inputs, completing the conditioning loop.
Adapter & tonearm leads plugged into the Cooker's inputs and outputs, respectively.
Then I threw the switch on the Cooker and let 'er rip!
Cooker tonearm adapter plugged into the Schick graphite headshell wires.
I'll let the Cooker condition the cables for three or four days, and then I'll report back on the results. I'll compare the Cooked Schick to my second 'un-cooked' Schick and tell you what happened.
Thanks for stopping by!
