You're not really comparing apples to apples here. The Kimber cable is not a braid of 3 solid core teflon coated silver wires like the Home Grown Audio cable is. One of the three wires in the Kimber is a proprietary 7 strand silver in TFE insulation (retail price of $18 per foot), the other two wires are a proprietary 7 strand copper in TFE insulation (retail price of 85 cents per foot). You can buy bulk Kimber Silver Streak braid for $24 per foot, so that's around $150 for a 1M pair. Add the WBT connectors and the retail cost of the parts is $250. The retail cost of the parts in the homegrown is about $60, whether you buy it from them or elsewhere. So the $460 retail, which includes the labor costs, retail markup, marketing costs, etc. does not seem high to me at all if the following is true: Kimbers proprietary 7 strand silver in TFE is really worth $18 per foot.
More importantly, if it sounds like 500 bucks then I don't care how much it cost to design and make. I doubt it is worth that much, but since I don't know anything about it nor have I listened to it, I would be hesitant to say one way or the other just yet. Likewise with the WBT connectors -- $50 per pair looks like a ripoff. Yet, I haven't seen firsthand how well they are constructed nor have I listened to them.
Gullibility can cut both ways. Why should you believe something is overpriced if you don't know how it is made, and have not listened to it? Just because it is expensive? For all I know the KCAG is the ripoff of the century, but I don't have enough information yet to make that call. I've fallen into this trap too. I've mentioned once or twice I thought the Headroom amps were way overpriced. Yet I don't know enough about their design, parts and labor costs, or most importantly, how they sound, to say something like that.
