On 07/12/2010 09:45, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
A pal asked me to look at a problem he was having. He'd linked his main
system in the living room to an amp in a bedroom some time ago and it had
stopped working. But had, he said, worked just fine at one time.

He'd at least used the correct principle. 'Tape out' on the main system to
'aux in' on the bedroom amp.

But the wiring was figure of eight thin flex - black and black with a
white stripe on one conductor - the stuff you might get with cheap car
speakers. At either end were twisted connections to the ends of phono
cables taped over with that brown parcel tape. He thought the cable may
have been cut with building works on the house - and couldn't really
remember how he'd routed it all those years ago.

A quick check showed the actual cable to be ok - it was just the twisted
connections which had failed, so I soldered on some new phono plugs
properly and it then worked just fine. With an unused input selected on
the main amp and the bedroom one cranked up fully, there was little noise
and no hum. Certainly acceptable. Even although the cable was most likely
run with mains house cabling.

I'm going to contact Russ Andrews and offer this cable at 50 quid a metre
since it obviously has magical properties. ;-)

I expect he already sells it. I bought an interconnect many years ago
from the local hifi shop (it was late on a Saturday and I needed it then)
which turned out to be made of thin mains cable with a fancy name
printed on the side.
Of course, at less than 1m long, it sounded exactly like every other
interconnect cable.

--
Eiron.