Decware's Zstyx were conceived early in Steve's journey when he was a broke audiophile and stumbled on some military grade silver plated wire which he is still selling to date. It may or may not be replaced with new speaker interconnects that he is using in his listening room. It could be used in the new cable scheme? I do not know what the latest is composed of and in no position to guess.

I've always been partial to heavy gauge speaker wires especially with silver plating. Carol cable offered some 14 gauge back at the turn of the century and it was used in my home theater exclusively. Since then the wire was removed and used in various other places at home. Last year it was all pulled and replaced with 12 gauge monster cable because it could be used to make Zstyx clones. When two lengths of the double conductor 14 gauge Carol wire with jacket removed are bundled together it becomes 8 gauge with the same strand count of the Zstyx cable. 4 of these assemblies where built with cotton sleeves and placed in the Chariot's Decware system from the Zkit to Crystal drivers. It improved the sound a couple of notches especially in the lower registries. The cables where just placed randomly on the floor as Steve suggests.

Eventually trying something different, I ran the cables parallel with each bundled strand separated by 1" cotton piping. Strapping it on with needle and thread the entire assembly was covered with 1" cotton mesh tubing. This created a bit of capacitance and more inductance between the two conductors. The sound did not change much. Still on the fence with the results of this cable variant, I am in the process of creating yet a different variant using a 8 conductor braid with Carol's wire.

Pic is of the cabinet interconnects with current configuration.


Starting with finding items to create a new cable pictured below is enough Carol wire to complete one 8' eight gauge speaker cable and 1/8" cotton tube.

The 1/8" cotton tube was chosen because of it's low dielectric constant value. 225' was ordered, more than enough for this project. Only 128' will be need to cover 16 lengths of #14 Carol Silver plated wire creating 2 braided cables with a value of 8 gauge wire. The rest will be used, if this configuration is favorable, to redo the existing cables for the Crystals.

Placing half of the cut tubing into a stainless pan to dye, care must be taken to unroll the length in place with the leading edge on the bottom while maintaining a circular motion stacking the tube until it is unrolled from the spool. This will insure an untangled tube removal after dyeing. A zip tie is added to the end of the tube for ease in retrieval. Dye is then added and prodded with the wood square to ensure complete coverage. Dyeing is not necessary but adding color to the tube aids in the braiding process.

A view of the tubing after about ten minutes of working the dye.

Spooling the dye tubing. Wear latex gloves while retrieving the dyed tubing by working the spool with one hand and keeping the tube between the pointing finger and thumb squeezing the excess dye from the tube as it is being rolled back on the spool.

Hang the tube to dry by stretching to avoid shrinkage of the natural cotton tube.

Now is a good time to remove the PVC jacket from the Carol cable while the tube is drying. I've tried various ways to accomplish this over time but found a heat gun is the best and most efficient. Start by heating the end of the cable and peeling back two inches of the cover creating a lump of material between the two strands. Place the wire strands in a preferably wood jaw vice and grab the clump with a pair of needle nose plyers. Heat the metal wire with the heat gun being carful not to put too much heat on the clump of PVC. Fan the heat gun back and forth from wire to PVC slowly adding pressure by pulling the needle nose. The heated PVC sheath will start to slice like butter with the hot wire. This process will take about 10 minutes for a 8' stretch of cable once the knack is obtained. Care should be taken not to damage any of the very fine strands in each of the 14 gauge strands being a cotton mesh tube is used to insulate the wires in the finished project. This will ensure reliability in the product because if strands are broken the can work thru the cotton mesh creating shorts with use.

The result after a few hours of work and some of the items used.

Treading the bare wire into the cotton tube is made easier by first bunching the cotton on a rod a littler bigger than the diameter of the wire. Grind a channel at the end of the rod to act as a catch for shrink tubing that will bridge the rod and tinned end of wire for the threading process. I used a 30" rod which held enough cotton tube for doing two strands. Simply work the tubing on to the wire with both hands starting with the end closest to the bridge.

When the tubing is worked tight with the wire put shrink tubing on the start end of the assembly and do a final stretch of the tubing working toward the rod and cut the tubing. Repeat. After eight rounds of this there will be enough to do one speaker cable. The mirror only helps the sight here but another hour or so of work will be needed for the other speaker cable strands to be threaded.

I did not have enough banana ends to complete the cables so a temporary 10 gauge copper piece was soldered to the ends.

Braiding went fairly smooth and a bit easier than doing smaller gauge wire.

One done!


John



 

I'm impressed.
What an effort!

thanks