Originally Posted by Acoustic Chef
Now how conductive is nickel?
Well, according to
this, the resistivity of pure nickel is somewhat less three times that of pure gold; 6.842E-08 Ohm/m compared to 2.463E-08 Ohm/m. Of course, the actual materials used to plate connectors in the real world are definitely not going to be pure metals, but I think these provide a decent comparison. It doesn't look good for nickel, that's for sure...
But, consider this: the thickness of these platings is likely going to be on the order of
microns. That's
one-millionth of a meter. The change in resistivity of the plating is going to have a pretty minimal effect on the overall resistance of the cable.