Stager Silver Solids reworked
Posted: Sat Mar 04, 2017 9:42 am
I found these (http://stagersound.com/silver/intro.htm) on t'internet and ordered a 1m pair. The reviews, personal and professional were excellent. I didn't realise quite how flexible they were and they flopped all over the back of my set up. Basically, 28 gauge (0.5mm) silver wire in PTFE (Teflon) insulation with Canare F-10 RCA's. They sounded really good. If you like DNM these are like supercharged DNM and image like anything. However, I wasn't so pleased with the length as it not only looked awful (but who sees down the back of you set up?) and seemed to get entangled with the power cables (not good) One reviewer said something like "you could make it yourself but why bother as it costs about the same to let Marc Stager do it". So I looked it up, found he was wrong and decided to make a pair with a few changes:
a) DNM is spaced and the Stagers are twisted. I had a good experience replacing the supplied twisted cables on my super tweeters with spaced DNM and thought "why not?" and it makes it easier to not screw things up by twisting the wires.
b) I had good experience with Eichmann bullets on DNM and decided to use them instead of the substantial Canare's.
All the stuff is available on e bay at very reasonable prices. I spent about £75.00. A couple of BEWARES. 0.5mm wire will not fit down a 0.5mm bore PTFE tube. I used 1mm bore. The wire kinks like anything and comes in quite a tight coil. It pays to take care unwinding it. I didn't and paid the price.
The soldering is a bit fiddly and I used high silver content stuff and cleaned to wires and phono contacts with DeOxit gold. I couldn't figure out how to space the signal and ground leads so I left them to find their own place. It looks better than the sagging 1m length even though they are not evenly spaced.
Installed them and they are noticeably similar to the Stager's and now fit better. But the interesting thing is, after a few hours I stopped listening to the wonderful sound and started to engage with the music on a more emotional level. The individual instruments and singers are better defined and the bass, in particular, is really tuneful, realistic and deep.
Having paid about £165.00 for the Stagers and £75.00 for the DIY - I'd be onto a winner if they were the same. To my ears, these sound better and I trust they will continue to improve with time.
One word more. Cables can be very system specific. These are in a Musical Fidelity system upgraded by JS Audio. If yours is the same or similar and you have decent speaker cables (LS6 is my current favourite) then give it a go. £75.00 is not a fortune in this game.
Enjoy.
a) DNM is spaced and the Stagers are twisted. I had a good experience replacing the supplied twisted cables on my super tweeters with spaced DNM and thought "why not?" and it makes it easier to not screw things up by twisting the wires.
b) I had good experience with Eichmann bullets on DNM and decided to use them instead of the substantial Canare's.
All the stuff is available on e bay at very reasonable prices. I spent about £75.00. A couple of BEWARES. 0.5mm wire will not fit down a 0.5mm bore PTFE tube. I used 1mm bore. The wire kinks like anything and comes in quite a tight coil. It pays to take care unwinding it. I didn't and paid the price.
The soldering is a bit fiddly and I used high silver content stuff and cleaned to wires and phono contacts with DeOxit gold. I couldn't figure out how to space the signal and ground leads so I left them to find their own place. It looks better than the sagging 1m length even though they are not evenly spaced.
Installed them and they are noticeably similar to the Stager's and now fit better. But the interesting thing is, after a few hours I stopped listening to the wonderful sound and started to engage with the music on a more emotional level. The individual instruments and singers are better defined and the bass, in particular, is really tuneful, realistic and deep.
Having paid about £165.00 for the Stagers and £75.00 for the DIY - I'd be onto a winner if they were the same. To my ears, these sound better and I trust they will continue to improve with time.
One word more. Cables can be very system specific. These are in a Musical Fidelity system upgraded by JS Audio. If yours is the same or similar and you have decent speaker cables (LS6 is my current favourite) then give it a go. £75.00 is not a fortune in this game.
Enjoy.