Which is better? The Duelund DCA16GA, Duelund DCA20GA, or the Duelund Silver/Silk interconnects?
Duelund DCA16GA tinned-copper interconnects terminated with Duelund gold RCA’s.
Duelund DCA20GA interconnects.
The conclusion that I've come to is that they all are better, depending upon the application I'm using them for.
Duelund DCA16GA interconnects between my vintage Mac's.
For example, I had been using a set of nude Duelund DCA16GA interconnects to connect my vintage McIntosh MX110Z tuner-preamplifier and vintage McIntosh MC30 monaural amplifiers, and was liking the results.
I then tried the Duelund 1.0 silver/silk interconnects terminated with Duelund Rhodium RCA's that Chris at Parts ConneXion built up for me, but they sounded too laid back and blah between my vintage Mac's, so out they came and the Duelund DCA16GA tinned-copper interconnects went back into the system.
Duelund DCA20GA interconnects.
Then the Duelund DCA20GA tinned-copper tone-wire arrived, and I built a pair of interconnects so I could compare them to the DCA16GA interconnects between my Mac's.
Duelund DCA20GA interconnects on the MC30's.
When I connected my MX110Z & MC30's with the Duelund DCA20GA interconnects, I really liked what I was hearing.
The sound was even more balanced top-to-bottom, smooth, articulate, nuanced, and very naturally 'real' sounding, and I was immediately smitten with the results! Wow!
A completed pair of shielded Duelund DCA20GA interconnects!
I was on a roll, so I decided I'd build up a pair of shielded DCA20GA interconnects to try between the Auditorium 23 SUT and MX110Z, for use with the Sumile phono cartridge that's in for review.
Shielded DCA20GA tinned-copper tone-wire interconnects.
It turns out that the shielded DCA20GA interconnects didn't perform nearly as well with the A23 SUT to MX110Z connection as I'd hoped, and they certainly weren't as brilliantly musical as the nude DCA20GA's were between the MX110Z and MC30's.
Duelund shielded silver/silk interconnects with Duelund Rhodium-plated connectors.
Then I tried the shielded Duelund 1.0 silver/silk interconnects terminated with Duelund Rhodium RCA's that Chris at Parts ConneXion built up for me, to connect the A23 SUT and MX110Z, and it was a match made in heaven for use with the Sumile phono cartridge!
The same sort of thing happened with the very nice Belden 8402 microphone cable interconnects that I was using between my Intact Audio SUT's that I use with my Ortofon SPU Classic GM MkII.
Duelund DCA16GA shielded IC's for phono on my Intact Audio SUT.
When I tried the shielded DCA16GA interconnects that Chris at Parts ConneXion made up for me, they were incredibly musical & engaging on the Intact Audio SUT's, with great presence and vivid tone colors that really made the music come alive, and ended up displacing the Belden 8402 interconnects I had been using in that position.
Next I'll try the shielded DCA20GA interconnects I built on the Intact Audio SUT's and compare them to the shielded DCA16GA interconnects that Chris built. I'll report back when I get that done.
Here's the moral of this story:
The Duelund DCA16GA & DCA20GA tinned-copper cables, and the Duelund 1.0 silver/silk cables provide a useful range of voicing attributes for various interconnect applications, and have allowed me to dial in the musicality & sound the way I like it, by choosing the most musically satisfying one for a particular application.
The beauty of this sort of approach is that you can build up a set of each of these interconnects, have an interconnect stable to experiment with, and still be in them for less cost than it would be for one set of hoity-toity interconnects from one of the more typical wire mavens.
Besides being a great way to fine tune a system's voicing, it's a heck of a lot of fun for not much money!
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As always, thanks for stopping by, and may the tone be with you!
