Let us confess straight away – we never had any intention of manufacturing cables! The trouble is that, once you become aware of how much they contribute to the ultimate performance of an audio system, it is very hard to resist the temptation to experiment. We are lucky enough to use some of the world’s finest (and most expensive) cables in our development rig; so when we tried out the designs typically used by our customers – even expensive, big name brands – we were shocked by how poorly they performed. Our dream was to be able to offer cables that were not just demonstrably superior to the market leaders, but could actually give our customers a real taste of the world-leading cable performance that we take for granted … and with our low-margin pricing policy, ensure that we offered world-leading value for money as well.

This cable journey started when tests to determine the best internal wiring for the ML1 loudspeaker revealed much larger differences than we had expected between the different wire samples. Experiments to find an even better speaker cable led us to copper foil, and so impressive was the first prototype that we knew immediately we were on the right track. By fine-tuning the width and preparation of the foil and its dielectric, we now have a cable that customers assure us surpasses anything on the market at anywhere near its price … and, we can confirm, gets within spitting distance of the very finest designs available at any price.

Construction of the Ribbontek speaker cable is a time-consuming process; a whole day’s labour is required to create a single 2.5m pair. After cutting, the extra-wide copper foil is polished by hand to a mirror finish on both sides and the polish chemically removed, before two layers of proprietary dielectric materials are applied, followed by the plain black outer mesh. Termination is with the finest quality connectors available - Eichmann (ETI) Bayonet plugs or Eichmann spades. These offer the ultimate performance, especially when combined with the ETI Cablepod terminals fitted as standard to our ML1 loudspeaker.

If anything, we are even more excited about the results from our new Ribbontek interconnect. A specific width of copper foil receives the same initial preparation as the speaker wire, but is then treated with a coating to prevent oxidation, allowing us to use an air primary dielectric. By avoiding both the undesirable interactions of stranded cable and the skin effect problems of solid core wire, the Ribbontek interconnect offers smoothness, resolution and rhythmic drive that surpasses anything we’ve heard.

Incidentally, so effective have we found our ribbon wire to be that we now use carefully cut lengths of it to replace all of the internal wiring in our ML1 Plus loudspeaker - see the ML1 page for details.

Our work with 75 ohm SPDIF digital cables has shown us that the differences between them are every bit as audible as their analogue equivalents … and their design can be even harder to get right! The synergy between the cable and its connectors is especially critical, and we have found our combination of a top grade, purpose-made screened wire terminated with Eichmann copper Bulletplugs to simply outperform everything else we’ve tried.

Capacitance………………………0.41nf/ft
DCR…………………………… 0.003ohm/ft
Gauge ……………………………14awg
Dialectric……… Proprietary PolyZylene Blend
Dialectric strength………………..3000volts/mil

Capacitance……………………….0.097nf/ft
Dialectric…………Partial Air PolyZylene Blend

All cables are hand-built to order - we can make them to any length you require at the following prices:

One final note: although the reasons are not clearly understood, cable burn-in is a very real phenomenon and we advise all purchasers that our cables require a period of use before achieving their maximum performance. Fortunately, our ribbon wire gets up to speed more quickly than most; around 50 hours of music signal is generally sufficient.