Pure silver speaker cables DIY

Last year my favourite cable/interconnect supplier lent me a pair of his dog's b******* pure silver speaker cables for my Quad ESL 989's.

Truly amazing soundstage, clarity, you name a buzz word from a hi-fi magazine - these babies did it!
But at £1500 a pair I couldn't justify the expense.

However whilst trawling Google I found an American site devoted to DIY pure silver speaker cables.
Now this guy goes into some detail but what it boils down to is, you don't need a fancy "design" to get great results. And unless you live next to a taxi office or fire station you don't need a fancy twisted design to stop the cables acting as aerials.

So here it is - the recipe for a pair of cables that would cost 20x the price if they were built like hose pipes, bright orange/purple & named after a Nordic god:

1. Go to the website for Cooksons Precious Metals, Hatton Garden.
2. Find the 1.0mm PURE silver wire in the bullion pages.
3. It comes in 100 gram reels @ approx £45 for 12 meters.
4. Next go to http://www.adtech.co.uk/TubeSize2.htm to buy the PTFE tubing. You will need the heavy wall tube with an internal diameter around 1.3mm. Don't be tempted to get a smaller internal diameter as it'll become difficult to slide the wire into the tube.
5.Wait for the post man.

a. Open parcels.
b. Carefully uncoil siver wire.
c. Slide wire into PTFE tubing.
d. You can clean/lubricate silver with WD40 if you wish before sliding into tubing.
e. If your amp or speakers has clamp fittings, GREAT, cos all you do now is bend the ends of the silver into a U shape & clamp in place.
f. The best plugs are NO plugs. So buy banana plugs if it's the ONLY way to plug them into your amp/speakers. Make sure they are PURE silver or all this is a waste of time & money. Eichmann do superb ones.
And you MUST use a pure silver solder.
g. Sit down.
h. Listen to all your vinyl LP's again cos they will sound different.
i. After 2-3 days they will sound even more amazing as the cables burn in.
j. Tell everyone you meet what a great guy I am for telling you how to make a pair of awesome cables for a 20th of the price in about 30 minutes (or less)

So that's it - a single wire in a plastic tube.
No fancy twisting, recipes, years of research, smoke, mirrors, snake oil.
Believe it or not you can use the same wire/PTFE for interconnects too.
This is my next project - so I'll keep you posted.
Steve