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The Audio Obersvatory
Volume
2 Number 10 June 1994
Kimber TC Series Speaker Cable Kimber Kable
2725 South 1900 West Ogden, UT 84401 801 .621.5530
4TC Bi-wire $9.20/foot; 8TC $8.60/foot;
PostMasterTM Spades $14/pair
I
owned a pair of Kimber 4TC some years ago. Never had any complaints; easy
to use, very clean. Somehow, probably as the result of an increase in
disposable income (most likely imagined), the 4TC was replaced with ever
more expensive, bulkier, and invariably flawed cables. Such is the plight
of the audiophile puppy, for things have come full circle.
What happened was that I had a bunch of bi-wireable speakers come in for
review. Always being one to at least try and hit two birds with one stone,
I called the hep cats at Kimber and requested samples of their 4TC bi-wire
and their
8TC. As regards number of conductors and effective AWG, both wires
are the same.
The other night, I wondered who was the clown who first made a stiff,
unwieldy speaker cable. Yes, Romex has been around for a few decades,
but I mean something actually conceived as speaker cable. Fulton? Randall?
I don't know, but I'd sure like to hunt him down and give him a few lashes
with his own cable. I just don't see why speaker cable needs to double
as a home protection device. My guess is that Ray Kimber and I are in
accord on this point, for even his 9 gauge
BTC is slinky and oh so easy to bend and coil and generally have
fun with. Kimber products always seemed designed as complete products.
Their excellent RCA jacks and plugs are simply the best. Now Kimber's
added the PostMasterTM Spade. Usually, the words "Post Master"
are reserved for curse words, or check writing for stamps. Kimber PostMasters™
are much nicer
than Uncle Sam's.
At $14 a pair the PMs strike me as somewhat expensive, especially considering
the modest cost of Kimber's Kables. They are basically a sandwich design
with raised ridges on the part of the spade that's usually flat. The filling
part of the sandwich is a silicon wafer that allows the spade to push
back against the tightening of the post, allowing for secure connection
with mere fingertight pressure. In fact I found that it was better to
go with finger-tight, than the kinda-tight of a gently applied nut driver.
With nice, strong posts I opt for the pretty damn tight of a firmly (not
excessively) applied socket wrench. Either way, the PostMasters™
are the best production spades I've used. When I'm at my tweakiest, I
make an arguably better spade from a solid copper welding lug made by
Noble Wire and Terminal. But this is a labor intensive process, and I
don't do it often. Anyway, the PMs are so good I may not bother again.
That's the deal with this Kimber stuff. It's so good, why bother? Both
the 4TC and the 8TC are similarly characterless and uncolored. Both are
superbly balanced, tonally, with admirably neutral and undramatic frequency
extremes. As a friend of mine says, "You can't swing a dead cat without
hitting a cable maker." This truism tends to make audiophiles somewhat
lightheaded (with resulting light wallets), searching for the next
best
cable. Here's the truth: It ain't out there, folks.
When you consider the basic elements of cable construction (conductor,
insulation and geometry) you will come to realize that there's no magic
to be had. There is only the manipulation and variation of the elements
listed above. So, after years of playing with this cable and that cable,
and spending a lot of money, I've come to one inescapable conclusion:
can't name a consistently better cable than the Kimber TCs.
Oh, take it easy. I 'm not saying that there is no better cable or that
there'll never be a better cable. All that I'm saying is that for now,
my search is over. The TC allows a continuing and reliable amount of musical
truth to emerge from every speaker that I listened to over the last six
months. Other cables, many costing way more than the reasonably priced
Kimber, have been on hand and none of them strike me as being more fundamentally
true and neutral. This
is a good thing, gentle reader. You can rest assured of two facts: You
can afford Kimber 8TC or 4TC. And, if you do choose to buy Kimber, no
one on the block will own
anything that beats it. Just go out and buy some!
Paul A. Cervantes
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