[revised with new impressions 19 Feb 2022] 
Appreciating HiFi listening and metallurgy – what’s the connection? It is all in the cables. Metallurgy is simply the science of moulding raw metal ores through heat and other scientific methods to produce improvements in their content, transmission capacity, quality and durability. This can be said of all Hi Fi cables. My purpose in this entry is to focus on the recent (roughly from 2015 to 2021) rediscovery of cables branded as ‘Western Electric (WE) vintage’. Many independent HiFi retailers have bought rolls, bales and cannisters of spare, unused (and used) and forgotten stocks of WE cables to make into RCA, Phono interconnects, power cords, jumpers, speaker wires and so on.
Why WE? A quick read of this exceptional
commemorative centennial magazine published by WE in the US in 1981 trails many
hints: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f0983034219c6086e8100ac/t/5f43c3ed50ded441fb4c2fa0/1598276634701/WE-1981-09-10.pdf. As a pioneering telecommunications company, WE
paid meticulous attention to making durable, and as far as possible, weather
resistant wires to ensure reliable telephone and other commercial signal
transmissions. Most of their wires were made from copper, often alloyed with
tin, some with silver. The shielding was made of cotton or vinyl. For decades
since the 1880s, WE served as material subcontractor to the famous Bell
Telephone Company when the two become twinned as a corporate conglomerate. As
the 1981 article posted above showed, a small army of WE workers pulled the
wires into usable form by hand. So you can say WE wires are ‘handmade’!
I have tried roughly three types of WE RCA. This is
my amateurish hearing test with vintage amplifiers (especially the SANSUI
AU-999, AU-7900 and PIONEER ) so it is completely subjective and unscientific.
I have matched them to modern CD players like the BEL CANTO CD2 and MUSICAL FIDELITY
M6CD or the older but restored DENON DCD1420 20 Bit player from 1987.
1910 WE
First up, the 1910 edition of purportedly silver
alloyed, singled stranded copper wire that is roughly 18-22 AWG (quick guide to
what this means here: https://www.workerscompensation.com/news_read.php?id=37101) Basically, the higher the AWG measure, the better
it is suited for Hi Fi equipment. According to the Japanese retailer of this
variant of the WE cables, it was ex-US military stock commissioned from WE. He
added this photo to pique buyers’ interest. Of course, unless a historian or
scientist investigates further, we may never know whether it was actually used
in military signal systems either in peacetime or in combat.
This wire repurposed into RCA interconnects had
minimal shielding (see photo of thin cotton shielding), so it added nothing to
the very slight hum usually produced by vintage 1970s amplifiers when matched
to modern speakers built in the 2000s. It did not intensify the hum either. But
this wire cleaned up virtually all haziness to vocals recorded in analogue from
the 1950s and 1960s. And where the vocals were recorded in the 1970s, and
1980s, the voices sounded so natural they could have been singing within mere
metres/feet from the listener. The quality was natural, airy and extremely
‘unforced’. Sound stage was extremely impressive too, although if you want 100%
precision of placement, try the 1960s stock of WE reviewed below. I got my
friendly Singapore-based ‘indie’ online HiFi retailer on the CAROUSELL shopping
site, Hifi.audiophile, to add more strands of the 1910 cables which he carried
too, and the definition of voices, instruments and placement was reinforced to
the point that I had few complaints about the soundstage. I can also say that
the mid-range on all recordings became much more accurate and textured. And the
sound decay was jaw-droppingly on par with cables that cost FIVE times more!
But these 1910 cables truly are vocal specialists! Some remasters on CD or
digital streaming do exhibit some harsh compression of their vocal ranges but
not if you listen through these 1910 WE cables.
I particularly recommend playing the budget series
of EMI (UK) ‘Compacts for Pleasure’ or ’Music for Pleasure’ series of budget
CDs remastered from vinyl records. These were mass marketed throughout the
1980s and sold in large volumes. One of my favourites is this early remaster of
British crooner Matt Monro’s ‘SOFTLY AS I LEAVE YOU’ CD compilation. The music
was astounding for its clarity and the revelation of the clean upper registers
of Monro’s voicing of difficult passages. Additionally, when he sings torch
ballads such as ‘Love is a Many Splendoured Thing’, ‘Yesterday’, and ‘Portrait of
my Love’, the quiver in his voice demonstrated a liveliness never heard on
other cables. Play Paul Mauriat, Caravelli, Mantovani and Stan Getz on
saxophone, you will obtain an equally awesome reproduction from these cables.
Soundstaging and positioning of instruments are to drool over! The BEL CANTO
player suddenly seemed like it was the complete equal of the very best vinyl
turntable out there. Try playing the seemingly under-appreciated early
remasters of Ray Conniff's 1950s and early 1960s vinyl recordings from the CBS and
COLLECTABLES series of CDs and you will be rewarded with a time travel style
listening experience.
1940s WE – dubbed the ‘World War 2 US Navy Cables’
These were dubbed ‘US Navy WW2 cables’ because they
were purportedly commissioned by the US Navy. Now how did these compare with
the 1910 ones? These WW2 cables still brought out the best in remastered recordings
from the 1950s through 1970s. Instrumentals sported a new shine since one could
now hear the sound decay of each distinct instrument. The saxophone never
sounded more beautiful. Violins were placed in an intimate studio setting.
Vocals too compared very well with the 1910 cable cousins. But the downside
emerged when I played jazz recordings from the 1990s, the WW2 cables lost out
to the 1970s ones below in terms of sharpness of positioning of instruments and
voices, but the warmth and detail in the overall sound were retained. I did
however ‘cure’ this deficiency by downgrading my speaker cables from CARDAS and
CRYSTAL CABLE to US$5.50 run of the mill copper cable from the neighbourhood
hardware shop! So my verdict with the WW2 cable is that if you want to use them
as RCA and power cords, consider using ‘cheap’ speaker cables – you will be
astounded. My favourite test piece was the above-mentioned two Ray Conniff
remasters. No longer are they poor remasters. These cables take you back to
when they were recorded – regardless of your age! I must also confess that I had
previously thought the Ray Conniff sound from the 1950s and 1960s belonged to my
parents’ era and that it was uncool for their children to adore them – but these
WW2 WE cables have reversed that opinion completely – Ray Conniff is an
evergreen big band sound – on par with your Glenn Miller, Charlie Barnett, Ray
Anthony, Syd Lawrence and Ted Heath!
Thirdly, I experimented with another two variants
of the WE cables made in Nassau, New York in the 1960s, and in Plymouth,
Massachusetts USA, in 1973. I place
the 1960s and 1973 cables side by side because to me, their qualities are
remarkably alike, compared to their cousins from the earlier decades. This 1960s
multicoloured WE RCA is 16AWG and multi-stranded, while also retaining the
original cotton shielding. As shown below, it can also be shielded with the black and white striped pattern. The Singaporean local importer – Hifi.audiophile /MUSE
Project – added plastic shields before terminating the RCA interconnects. He
also offers these 1960s WE strands and the1973 WE cables as jumpers, phono
cables, speaker cables and power cords.
What effect did the multi-strand cables have? Matched RCA to RCA against the 1910s-40s versions, the vocals were equally magnificent in their revelation of natural timbre in voices. But when it came to instrumentals, there was a noticeable higher definition to violins, piano and saxophone while the soundstage was expanded just a little.
I completed my test setup by adding the 1973 WE
version as speaker cables, and added a ‘flat copper sheet’ type power cord –
also fashioned from WE stock – for good measure. This was also done for the
purpose of eliminating the harshness of treble when matching the mid-range
model of the Italian Emmespeakers Copernicus to my above-mentioned SANSUI
amplifiers. For a few years I was resigned to the possibility that the
COPERNICUS could only match amplifiers built in the 2000s, because of the
harshness issue. The complete use of the WE wires from wall outlet to speaker
cable to RCA interconnects eliminated 100% of the harshness – it really is that
good! This also gives me the confidence to write a review of the COPERNICUS in
the next round of SOUNDBOXES blog posts. You must try WE Hi Fi cables and power
cords at least once – they will make a huge difference!
ALAN
December 2021, updated February 2022
[P.S. What about comparisons with other modern HiFi
cables? For the moment, I will venture a guarded assessment based on tentative
listening, pending deeper tests and detailed comparative listening sessions:
the WE are the equal of KIMBER, SILTECH and the mid-lower level CRYSTAL CABLE.]
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