While researching high purity silver wire for audio interconnects we came across some excellent 4N solid core. This 0.5mm PTFE insulated wire looked ideal for making braided audio interconnects but, unfortunately, was a bit to expensive for the price point we were looking to achieve. However, it is ideal for using in short lengths for projects like the internal wiring in our MC SUT, or for headshell leads.
We were about to test a couple of new tonearms and cartridges and needed some headshell leads. The wire was great to work with, and we made sets of leads for the 2 new cartridges, ready for testing. We listened to the cartridges with both our standard Oxygen-Free Copper leads, and the new Solid Silver PTFE leads. Physically, the Solid Silver leads showed a slight reduction in capacitance and inductance over the standard leads, but the real difference was in the sound. We were testing a moving magnet cartridge (Grace F9) and a moving coil cartridge (Supex SD900 Rosewood). Differences were subtle, but with both cartridges the Solid Silver leads sounded better in our opinion. The difference appeared greater with the Supex, but the improvement was definitely there with the Grace as well.
