DIY Cable Lifters

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Brad225

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I have toyed with the idea of lifting / neatening up my cables for a while. Others have tried this for improvment of the sound with mixed results but I figured it was worth a try if nothing but straighting out my runs of cables.

Before I thought about a design for them I figured I would try somthing simple and find out if it would affect the sound.

I took some old plastic CD cases and opened them up like little tents and placed them under all of the interconnects and speaker cables on the left side of the system.
My logic -although often suspect- was by placing them only on the left side and listening to a piece of music I was familar with, and had just listen to should make an immediate difference if it was going to have any affect. There would either be a shift in the sound stage and image to the left or right if they had some affect or stay the same if there was no affect.

I was listening to Diana Krall "Girl in the other room" for my compairson.

The image,much to my suprise moved to the left by about 12" ( my CLS's are 64" from inside frame to frame ) and was much more pronounced and clearer.

I then placed some little plastic tents under the right side cables and the image and stage moved back to the center and had the same new clarity as the left side had shown.

The sound was clearly better with the lifters in.

This may not be true for all systems and cables. The fact that I use unsheilded Shunyata Altair & Andromeda cables and they were laying on carpeting that may or may not have a static problem or some other electrical affect from below the floor may have something to do with it. All I can say is the sound clearly changed for the better.

With that I decided to make as simple a lifter as I could. I chose wood as it is easy to work with and as far as I know it doesn't conduct electricty or much vibration.

I made mostly single posts with a recess the the top. Two of them have 3 adjustable arms for the criss-cross of wires behind my preamp. Making the lifters different heights made it easier to support cables on different pieces of equipment.

Try some CD cased under your cables and see if it makes a difference. There is no cost involved and it might help.
 

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Can't wait to try it!!

Brad,:bowdown:
This is why I love this site. I can only hope that I can return the favor someday and take the time to conduct some experiments and post my results. I have often wondered about cable lifters, but for sure was never going to lay out the cash for a set. I never thought of trying to create my own. The design you used was simple and looked good. (was that cherry?) I am a pretty decent wood worker (having built some of the furniture in my house) so I think I should be able to knock some of these out in the not to distant future. Was very interesting to hear your results, can only hope we all have the same experience.:clap:
Doug - out
 
WOW! Great job. I have some and noticed no difference....the only difference is it keeps the four legged friends out. So, they actually work very well. :p
 
Thanks guys.
The wood is Mahogany. It was the easiest lumber to reach on the wood rack plus with the straight grain it makes short pieces that are strong.

For the recesses to hold the cables I used a 1" forstner drill bit with a piece of wood that was either twice the width or length and then cut through the middle of the hole to make 2 pieces with a half circle cut out of each one.
 
Nice work Brad. I've known about this tweak but never did it since I didn't know how to make the "cable lifters."
 
Ok I have to ask, I got attacked by a bottle (s) of wine one evening and i tried this, but i actually took "pin thingies" and stabbed them into the wall, and rested my left speaker wire on it. And in all honesty i didnt notice a difference, Im using Audioquest Volcano speaker wires, so its great wire. Im not mocking anyone, or saying it doesnt work, im just curies to hear how it worked for other people, or maybe since I have top end cables it didnt make a difference? I dont know im just really curies about this. I have heard some people say makes big difference, and others say they didnt notice.

/shrug I am curies though :)
 
I too have tried making my own cable lifters out of cold press illustration board. My experience with them has been with my shorter cable runs to my center and main speakers (about 10 ft) there was little deference. For my surround speakers I was using 30 ft runs and noticed allot of difference, the sound stage seamed to open up and the bass seamed a little crisper.


If you want to test cable lifters you can use some old ceramic mugs you may have laying around the kitchen to temporarily rase your cables off the floor.
 

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