I really like the musicality & sonics of the 2-meter DCA16GA interconnects I made (with Switchcraft 3502AAU RCA's) to go from my vintage McIntosh MX110Z tuner-preamp to my vintage McIntosh MC30 monaural amplifiers.
I described them like this: "The overall presentation is warmish, beautifully musical, a little bit dark, but with a surprising amount of transparency and detail resolution, and with a vibrant presentation of tone color and musical nuance that seems to me to be the aural equivalent of the cinematic landscape of Technicolor. Very impressive!"
The pair of 1-meter Duelund DCA16GA interconnects I made to go from my Intact Audio dual-mono SUT to my vintage McIntosh MX110Z tuner-preamp sounded similarly glorious, but had way too much hum, so I had to take them back out and put back in my 'go to' SUT interconnects, a pair of 1-meter Belden 8402 microphone cable interconnects, which are terrific interconnects in their own right, and are nicely (but not totally) quiet when the shield is connected at both ends.
I had inquired with Chris at Parts Connexion about some appropriate shielding to use for my Duelund DCA16GA interconnects, because I wanted to experiment with the DCA16GA interconnects on my Intact Audio dual-mono step-up transformer (SUT).
Chris recommended the ConneX 5/32" tinned copper braided sleeving (TCBRAID-70764), and told me, "You’ll need 10% more length for this, since you’ll need to “push” the braid together to open it up, then thread the Duelund wire, and then pull the braid back snug."
Duelund Gold male RCA
Chris also asked me, "Duelund has developed some RCA male plugs for us that are direct rhodium or gold over OCC copper for the contact, and which use a natural fiber (compressed paper) outer shell like the outer form of the Duelund CAST capacitors. Would you like to try a few pair? I know you have some strong feelings on the Switchcraft RCA plugs."
Duelund Rhodium male RCA.
As terrific as everything Duelund is I immediately wanted to say "Yes!", but there was one glitch, as the main reason I like the Switchcraft RCA's (other than they sound really good and are inexpensive) is that they easily fit into the narrow spacing between vintage inputs like those on my vintage McIntosh MX110Z tuner-preamplifier. Some of the modern RCA's are just too fat to fit in the available space on vintage gear.
Chris had me measure the inputs on my MX110Z with a pair of calipers to determine if there was adequate spacing distance to fit a pair of Duelund RCA's, and we determined there was enough space, so I said, "Sure, Chris, I'd love to try the Duelund RCA's".
A little after that I got another email from Chris that contained a delightful surprise:
"We got some time today and made up four pairs of interconnects using Duelund wire and RCA's:
A quad of Duelund interconnects. Lower left (A), upper left (B), upper right (D), and lower right (C).
A. 1 meter pair of interconnects using a twisted pair DCA16GA, with 2 pairs of Duelund direct gold over OCC copper RCA’s with a natural brown fiber shell (the IC's in the lower left in the photo above).
Duelund DCA16GA interconnects with Duelund Gold RCA plugs.
B. 1 meter pair pair of interconnects using a twisted pair of DCA16GA, plus tinned copper braided shielding that is connected to ground at one end, covered in an unbleached cotton tubing outer jacket, with 2 pair of Duelund direct gold over OCC copper RCA’s with a natural brown fiber shell for the phono (upper left in the quad photo above).
Duelund DCA16GA shielded IC's for phono
C. 1 meter pair of interconnects using a twisted pair 0.4mm “dead soft annealed” solid-core silver (with a cotton/oil jacket), with 2 pairs of Duelund direct rhodium over OCC copper RCA’s with natural fiber shell in black).
Duelund solid core silver IC's with Duelund Rhodium RCA's
D. 1 meter pair of interconnects using flat stacked pairs of 1.0 Series “dead soft annealed” foil/ribbon silver (with a silk/oil jacket), with 2 pair of Duelund direct rhodium over OCC copper RCA’s (with natural fiber shell in black).
Duelund solid silver foil / ribbon IC's with Duelund Rhodium RCA's
We are going to overnight these to you, to see what you think."
Wow! I'm blown away, thank you for making and sending these, Chris!
As you can see from the photos, Chris' quad of Duelund interconnects arrived today and I pulled them out of the package and took a few photos of them.
Like everything Duelund, the various wire and RCA's are beautifully made, and Chris did a fantastic job of building the interconnects.
Duelund DCA16GA shielded IC's for phono on my Intact Audio SUT.
Duelund IC's on the MX110Z.
I've got the Duelund DCA16GA shielded IC's on the Intact Audio SUT now, and just checked the amount of hum, and it's lower than it is with the Belden 8402 microphone cable interconnects - that's great!
It'll take me a little while to get some run-in time on these Duelund interconnects before I report back any meaningful listening observations, so keep checking back over time for updates.
There will be some good rockin' tonight!
Update from Chris: "We finally got some more DCA16GA back in stock today, 75% of which was sold out before it arrived. As of this writing, we have about 500 meters left in this batch (about 1 to 2 weeks of additional sales, I suspect). We will then have another large shipment arriving mid-October'ish."
Thanks for stopping by, and there will be much more to come!
