After reading Bill Dion's comment about how well he liked the interconnects he made using vintage Western Electric WE16GA wire, I was intrigued and thought I'd give it a try too. Many thanks to Bill for such an awesome comment!
So out came my vintage Western Electric WE16GA wire, four Switchcraft SWC-3502AAU RCAs, my Hakko soldering station, and the Kester 44 solder.
Getting ready to solder the Western Electric WE16GA wire to the Switchcraft SWC-3502AAU RCA's center pin.
I cut enough off enough WE16GA to make a pair of 1.5 meter interconnects, trimmed the ends, and did a little soldering.
One RCA done!
As you can see, like Bill, I soldered one run of the twisted pair to the pin, and the other to the negative/ground, with a twist about every 2-inches.
Unlike Bill, I didn't have any Belden tinned-copper tube braid handy to use for shielding (Hey, Bill, where did you get your shielding?), so I went for a 'nude' pair of RCA interconnects.
Completed Western Electric WE16GA interconnects with Switchcraft SWC-3502AAU RCAs.
I wrapped a little white microphone tape on each end of one interconnect to make it easier to tell R & L apart when plugging & unplugging, and I put a wrap of blue microphone tape on one end of each to indicate directionality.
I think the red, white, and blue color-scheme is a perfect match for this All-American interconnect!
Time to play some music with the Western Electric WE16GA interconnects.
With everything now ready to go, I removed the Belden 8402 microphone cable interconnects that I am using between my vintage MX110Z McIntosh tuner-preamplifier & vintage McIntosh MC30 monaural amplifiers, and installed the Western Electric WE16GA interconnects in their place.
An old test pressing of Miles Davis' Cookin' cued up and ready to go!
It was apparent from the first drop of the stylus that the Western Electric WE16GA interconnects are a lot more transparent than the Belden 8402 microphone cable interconnects, while maintaining a similar tonal balance.
One thing I've noticed about the vintage Western Electric WE16GA wire, is that when I first install it into my system the timbral textures always sound a little bit 'rough' to me (and true to form Miles' muted trumpet was a little bit edgy on my Cookin' test pressing), then given a little time everything smooths out nicely to give the rich, natural, and colorful presentation that Western Electric WE16GA is known for.
That's what the Western Electric WE16GA has done when I've used it as speaker cables, as wiring in my Duelund CAST crossovers, and as internal wiring for my Westminster Royal SEs, so I assume that will also be true for the Western Electric WE16GA as interconnects.
I'm going to put the WE16GA interconnects on my Audiodharma Cable Cooker and run them in for a while to speed the run-in process, then I'll report back and let you know how they turned out.
More to come!
