I have now installed vintage Western Electric WE16GA in the Duelund low-frequency crossovers of my Tannoy Westminster Royal SE loudspeakers to replace the Neotech copper wire I used originally as part of the Duelund-WRSE crossover project.

As you know, last week I replaced the Neotech silver wire I was using in the high-frequency section of my Duelund CAST crossovers with the vintage Western Electric WE16GA and it was an immediate improvement. Over the course of the week it has only gotten better! I'm really impressed!

I now have vintage Western Electric wire from my McIntosh MC30 amps (they're wired internally with vintage Western Electric wire), speaker cables of Western Electric WE16GA, and now all the Duelund CAST crossover wiring is vintage Western Electric WE16GA too.

UPDATE:

I thought I'd offer a few observations after installing the vintage Western Electric WE16GA wire into the outboard Duelund CAST crossovers for my Tannoy Westminster Royal SEs.

In case you are just coming to the Western Electric WE16GA story let me do a brief recap. When I first did the Duelund-WRSE Project, I used 20 gauge Neotech solid-core UP-OCC silver wire with a Teflon jacket for the high-frequency section of the crossover, and 14 gauge Neotech solid-core UP-OCC copper wire with a Teflon jacket for the low-frequency section of the crossover. It's really good wire. You can see the Duelund CAST crossovers with the Neotech wire in the photo below.

So then, along came Mr. Yazaki-san of SPEC fame, who recommended the vintage Western Electric WE16GA wire, and in fact uses it as a reference in his personal system, for all his audio development work, and for demonstrating his SPEC equipment at hi-fi shows around the world. You can see the WE16GA (the red wires) below connected to the binding posts of Mr. Nakamura-san's custom Class-D amplifier that Mr. Yazaki-san built for him.

That's a a coil of Western Electric WE16GA hooked up to my audiodharma Cable Cooker in preparation for conditioning in the photo below.

First I tried the Western Electric WE16GA as a pair of speaker cables from my vintage McIntosh amplifiers to the Duelund CAST outboard crossovers for my Tannoy Westminster Royal SE loudspeakers as recommended by Mr. Yazaki-san. The experiment was a complete success!

I could easily hear the sound  qualities of the Western Electric WE16GA that Mr. Yazaki-san described as being "transparent, beautiful, rich, dynamic, and possessing real stereoscopic sound full of musicality” and I like it.

Then as Ron and I were rebuilding my vintage McIntosh MC30 monaural amplifiers in the Mr. Yazaki-san inspired 'capacitor adventure', Ron pointed out to me that the original wire used internally in the MC30s was Western Electric, albeit a different model than the WE16GA. I was intrigued by McIntosh's use of the Western Electric wire in their vintage amps, and certainly those vintage Macs sound great, deepening my respect even further for the vintage Western Electric wire.

At this point I had vintage Western Electric wire in my amplifiers and as speaker cables, and the next logical extension was to wire the my external Duelund CAST crossovers for my Westminsters with the vintage Western Electric WE16GA wire. Cautiously, I first wired-up only the high-frequency Duelund CAST crossovers with the vintage Western Electric WE16GA, and bluntly, the vintage Western Electric WE16GA absolutely killed the fancy 20-gauge Neotech solid-core UP-OCC silver wire. Killed it!

That of course meant that I needed to try the same thing in the low-frequency section of the Duelund CAST crossovers, replacing the 14-gauge Neotech solid-core UP-OCC copper wire with a Teflon jacket with the vintage Western Electric WE16GA.

The copper Neotech in the LF section sounded pretty good actually, so it wasn't quite as dramatic a slap-down when changing to the vintage Western Electric as it was with the silver Neotech in the HF section of the Duelund CAST crossover.

Hindsight often provides insights it seems, and my primary insight here was that using different wire in the HF & LF sections of the Duelund CAST crossovers caused the sound to be less cohesive and balanced than it was when using the same vintage Western Electric WE16GA wire in both sections.

The use of the Western Electric WE16GA in both the HF & LF sections of the Duelund CAST crossovers gave a seamless coherence to the high & low frequencies of music that was somewhat lacking when using the two differing Neotech wires, as well as increasing the overall "transparent, beautiful, rich, dynamic, and possessing real stereoscopic sound full of musicality” sonic signature of the vintage Western Electric WE16GA wire.

So there you have it. The experiment of replacing the Neotech wire in my Duelund CAST external crossovers for my Westminster Royal SE loudspeakers was a complete success, and I'm really enjoying the result.

There is nothing about the Western Electric WE16GA wire that would suggest how wonderful it sounds. It seems rather ordinary with its tinned multi-stranded copper conductors, internal 'Saran-like' sheath, and cloth exterior, but its sonic & musical attributes are anything but ordinary, in fact they're extraordinary!

I realize it is somewhat cruel telling you all about how wonderful this vintage Western Electric WE16GA wire is, and then at the same time telling you how unobtainable it is to find for your own project. I'm sorry about that, but the Western Electric WE16GA story is one heck of an interesting one, which deserves telling in spite of its rarity, and it makes my respect for accomplishments of Western Electric increase even further, as if that were possible!

Once again a great big 'Thank you!' to Mr. Yazaki-san for sharing the secret of vintage Western Electric WE16GA wire with us!

Thanks for stopping by!