I've been in the market for quite some time for high quality, relatively long (+15') speaker cables to go with my Decware Zen Amp and my Infinity Composition Prelude P-FR speakers. I also have very little money to throw at the problem. Recently, I purchased some mystery cables which I had moderate hopes for filling my need. The following is a pictorial journey of the re-termination process and rambling observations vaguely related to lessons learned from the process.
The end of the journey first; even with questionable re-termination techniques, these speaker cables sound fantastic. When I first saw a picture of these cables I was intrigued by the interesting flat braided litz wire pattern. What I did not expect was that the braided wire would be silver. Additionally I did not expect the re-termination process to be so painful. Termination of litz wire is about as enjoyable as an unexpected root canal. Special thanks to the Decware forum for fielding my questions and chrisby's post in particular for helping steer me in the right direction of a solder pot for helping make adequate termination. While I don't actually own a solder pot, this was the hint I needed for coming up with a successful solution.
Being on a minimalist budget, the results of this experiment were dictated by the materials I had lying around my shop. The spades / plugs are Monster quicklocks housed in a lacewood wooden brace secured with threaded brass plugs. I finished with a slightly longer run (18') than I need at the moment with the off-chance of re-terminating these cables (again) with better silver spades. My thoughts are something similar to how Goertz terminates their flat silver litz cables. For the time being, however, I'm very pleased with the current results.
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