DIY foil audio cables info ...

Thought I would post this due to the recent thread about DIY foil cable. I decided to make some more foil cables, and decided to search around online for a less expensive source. It did not go well. Almost all of the companies that sell foil, do not rate their foil by purity, but by alloy type or intended use. They also had minimum purchases of quite a bit of foil. The few who were willing to sell small quantities to me, averaged wanting approx $150 to $300 for only 50 ft of foil, they couldn't even tell me the purity of.

So I went back to my source who sells 6N purity copper, who is also the source that sells to pretty much every audio manufacturer who sells foil audio products. The downside of this source, is they won't sell to the public ( It's nice to know people ), as well as the price of the high purity copper is STUPIDLY EXPENSIVE !!!!!   So much so, that I will not be buying any more foil for cables, but will be sticking to UPOCC round conductors from now on.

So hopefully this will help anyone interested in foil DIY cables.

Here is the foil I just received :

Yeah ... I found several places I could buy both copper and silver foil, but not in real high purity. In my experience, higher purity always sounds significantly better ... thus UPOCC wire.

I will ask what audio companies carry their foil products, and I am sure you can buy from those companies. You just can't buy from the manufacturer directly is what I was trying to say.

Quote:

Originally Posted by weibby 

what a waste... was meaning to try some just for kicks.

Do you think you can sell me like 3 feet?

It's not a waste at all. I have been using this foil for over 10 years, building some of the best sounding DIY speaker cables on the planet. It's the same philosyphy as Goertz and Vacuum State use, but with MUCH higher purity foil and a thinner gauge, which MUCH improves several key areas of the sound.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kawai_man 

Ive been interested in building some flat speaker cables, but I'm going to use solar panel wire, which is flat but its pretty hard and wont tear like foil, and it's cheap!

Uhm .... You don't want hard copper. You want very soft annealed copper. You also don't want thick copper foil, but approx .0005 thickness. You can't just guess at it and get good sound.

Quote:

Originally Posted by weibby 

no no, i don't doubt that.

What i meant its that its waste they don't sell to general public.
 

Oh yeah .... I really don't understand why they don't either. I guess they don't want the hassles of dealing with Joe Public.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AudioCats 

one step lower, ERSE foil inductors, already 99.99% guaranteed.

 

The Alpha-Core is said to be sonically identical to ERSE, and Partsconnecxion is having them @ 50% off (un-common value's, but you are only aftering the foil, it doesn't really matter).

That's a good idea. Only thing you would have to know is the thickness of the foil. This would allow you to do calculations easier for L,C, and R. Admittedly, I went overkill on the 6N part, but I have been doing this so long, I have garnered a preference for really high purity conductors. Your suggestion is great for keeping the cost down though.