Check out the new python thick mains cables

[Dan Osib]

OK this has definitely been confirmed. This cable is genuine lengths of Harmonic Technologies Pro AC-11 (check the photo below). Apparently this cable doesn't sell well in China and this guy has plenty of it he wants to get rid of, so thats why it's going for such a low price. Pro AC-11 goes for $200 for 1.5m in the US so if this stuff is real I've got a real bargain here at a quarter of that price.

 

[Rich]

Confirmed? By who? By the same guy who told you they were using genuine Oyaide plugs (which they obviously aren't)? By a photograph? Gee, that's not hard to fake. With all due respect Dan, it sounds like you are trying awfully hard to justify your purchase and convince yourself that these are awesome sight-unseen, when all appearances indicate you are being scammed.

By the way the AC-11 is named that way because it uses 11 gauge conductor. I thought this guy said these used 9 gauge? Also, the HT cable has two shields and tech flex over the wire, so why would they print the product info directly on the wire when it will never be seen? All indications are that this guy is scamming you. Even if what he says is true, he is breaking all kinds of laws by taking someone else's product and repackaging it under his own name.

I'm kind of baffled, really. You started a thread asking for recommendations for "the best mains cable on the planet" and got some good recommendations. But you ignore all those and go for some cheap Chinese knockoffs on ebay, and then spend this entire thread trying to convince yourself that you got "the deal of the century" when all indications are that this is a complete scam.

 

[Dan Osib]

Confirmed? By who? By the same guy who told you they were using genuine Oyaide plugs (which they obviously aren't)? By a photograph? Gee, that's not hard to fake. With all due respect Dan, it sounds like you are trying awfully hard to justify your purchase and convince yourself that these are awesome sight-unseen, when all appearances indicate you are being scammed.

By the way the AC-11 is named that way because it uses 11 gauge conductor. I thought this guy said these used 9 gauge? Also, the HT cable has two shields and tech flex over the wire, so why would they print the product info directly on the wire when it will never be seen? All indications are that this guy is scamming you. Even if what he says is true, he is breaking all kinds of laws by taking someone else's product and repackaging it under his own name.

I'm kind of baffled, really. You started a thread asking for recommendations for "the best mains cable on the planet" and got some good recommendations. But you ignore all those and go for some cheap Chinese knockoffs on ebay, and then spend this entire thread trying to convince yourself that you got "the deal of the century" when all indications are that this is a complete scam.

OK Rich I've already stated that it is a 50/50 chance that this cable is knockoff and I've been scammed by this guy. At no time did he tell me that the IEC plugs are OYAIDE, I know for definite that they are highly probable to be copies, I don't mind here because a lot of the Oyaide copies are still pretty good and still measure well in terms of conductivity, providing about 80% of the performance of the real mccoy. When I started the original thread about the finest mains cable available I explained that I meant 'on a budget'. I'm not a wealthy man so I have to choose carefully when buying things. As I said - this deal with the mains cable I bought is 50/50 that it is good or bad stuff. You or I don't know whether it is or not at this stage. I've taken a gamble here, so what if it pays off and this cable sounds good, then I've just saved myself a fortune (thousands of dollars), and I paid only $500 US DOLLARS for 10 mains cables?! Anyway he offers a refund if I'm not happy with them.

 

[churchill]

Likewise. Frank makes a quality product, provides no-nonsense recommendations and pushes his customers away from buying things that would not make good sense. I have been nothing but supremely satisfied with every purchase from Signal Cable.

I agree that Signal Cable makes a great price/performance ratio power cable. I'm using 5 or 6 of them now!

 

[robertawillisjr]

a copy could be quite identical but not original product whereas counterfeit would be more of a lookalike but in reality different from the original

Still seems to be illegal either way. If so, why are we discussing purchasing illegal products?

 

[robertawillisjr]

I agree that Signal Cable makes a great price/performance ratio power cable. I'm using 5 or 6 of them now!

Yes they do. I have used them for years. I changed over to DH Labs which to my ears give better results

 

[Dan Osib]

Still seems to be illegal either way. If so, why are we discussing purchasing illegal products?

Because a lot of people can't afford to pay $80.00 for an IEC plug, so if there are pretty good copies of the same thing floating about for sale on the net for a small fraction of that price which do nearly as good a job as the original then why not aquire it for your hi-fi? After all I highly doubt the Police are going to come and arrest for plugging it into the back of my CD player.

 

[robertawillisjr]

Because a lot of people can't afford to pay $80.00 for an IEC plug, so if there are pretty good copies of the same thing floating about for sale on the net for a small fraction of that price which do nearly as good a job as the original then why not aquire it for your hi-fi? After all I highly doubt the Police are going to come and arrest for plugging it into the back of my CD player.

Well we certainly disagree here. I could have used this rationale when I bought my legitimate pair of Serengeti sunglasses instead of the $15 dollar knock offs I saw on the internet.

CNBC recently reported that counterfeit goods cost this and other so called first world countries trillions of dollars annually. More importantly are the widespread safety issues.

 

[Dan Osib]

Well we certainly disagree here. I could have used this rationale when I bought my legitimate pair of Serengeti sunglasses instead of the $15 dollar knock offs I saw on the internet.

CNBC recently reported that counterfeit goods cost this and other so called first world countries trillions of dollars annually. More importantly are the widespread safety issues.

No offence intended but are you by chance a politician or work for the government? Plenty of people out there have intentionally bought the odd one or two immitation product during their lives. I bet even you have too over the years. Thousands and thousands of people own chinese immitation IEC plugs whilst knowing they are fakes. People can't afford to pay exorbitant rip off prices for products that cost pennies to make and sell for nearly hundreds of dollars, but that's life and nobody nor I nor you can change it. Quote: 'We certainly disagree here' yeah right, I bet plenty of members here intentionally own some degree of fake product of some kind, something like an immitation Rolex for example. Unfortunately not everyone is as lawbiding as yourself here. Not everyone is an angel. As for safety issues I've had a good look over the net and so far haven't heard of anybobody having problems with their copy Oyaide IEC plugs as of yet but I'm still keeping my eyes peeled. As I already stated, anything electrical I buy over the net I pass onto my friend (ex electrical engineer) for proper equipment testing if there is the possibility that it is suspect. I'm not promoting the immitation world, I'm just informing you of the way that it is at the moment.

 

[DTB300]

Changing out all of your stock power cables with the new ones you bought will have a change on the sound you get. Will it be a good or bad change? Only you will be able to determine that.

Some advice for a next purchase - try out some used items to learn about their sound and save some $$$ in the mean time. A lot of times you can turn around and sell them for the same cost as you bought them - you are then only out shipping for a learning experience.

 

[Rich]

OK Rich I've already stated that it is a 50/50 chance that this cable is knockoff and I've been scammed by this guy.

No, you haven't. In what post did you state that? In every post you have been trying to show that this cable is made of something that it is not, or you have made excuses for how it will sound good even though it is a knockoff.

At no time did he tell me that the IEC plugs are OYAIDE

Then why did you state in your first post that they were Oyaide?

I know for definite that they are highly probable to be copies, I don't mind here because a lot of the Oyaide copies are still pretty good and still measure well in terms of conductivity, providing about 80% of the performance of the real mccoy.

There you go again making excuses for why some knockoff is going to sound good. How can you expect to give these cables an unbiased assessment when you seem to be working so hard to convince yourself that they are going to sound great?

As I said - this deal with the mains cable I bought is 50/50 that it is good or bad stuff. You or I don't know whether it is or not at this stage.

You may be unsure, but at this point I am quite satisfied that it is most definitely not "good stuff." Otherwise, the guy wouldn't have had reason to lie to you.

You still haven't addressed the point that the guy sent you a picture to prove that he was using 9 gauge cable and then sent you a picture to prove it was actually HT AC-11 cable, even though AC-11 cable is 11 gauge! That is pretty clear evidence that this guy is going out of his way to lie to you about the quality of his product and you are going out of your way to buy his lies hook, line and sinker.

Anyway he offers a refund if I'm not happy with them.

Yeah, good luck with that.

 

[Rich]

Changing out all of your stock power cables with the new ones you bought will have a change on the sound you get. Will it be a good or bad change? Only you will be able to determine that.

Some advice for a next purchase - try out some used items to learn about their sound and save some $$$ in the mean time. A lot of times you can turn around and sell them for the same cost as you bought them - you are then only out shipping for a learning experience.

Both good points, Dan. Also, the Cable Company is a great way to try out cables before purchasing.

 

[Dan Osib]

No, you haven't. In what post did you state that? In every post you have been trying to show that this cable is made of something that it is not, or you have made excuses for how it will sound good even though it is a knockoff.



Then why did you state in your first post that they were Oyaide?



There you go again making excuses for why some knockoff is going to sound good. How can you expect to give these cables an unbiased assessment when you seem to be working so hard to convince yourself that they are going to sound great?



You may be unsure, but at this point I am quite satisfied that it is most definitely not "good stuff." Otherwise, the guy wouldn't have had reason to lie to you.

You still haven't addressed the point that the guy sent you a picture to prove that he was using 9 gauge cable and then sent you a picture to prove it was actually HT AC-11 cable, even though AC-11 cable is 11 gauge! That is pretty clear evidence that this guy is going out of his way to lie to you about the quality of his product and you are going out of your way to buy his lies hook, line and sinker.



Yeah, good luck with that.

OK Rich I now accept the fact that this stuff could be a load of crap, then again it might turn out to be pretty good. How many more times do I have to say this. In my first post I even said I might get lucky with them (remember?). The fact is it could swing either way. You are convinced it is crap. How do you know what it sounds like? You haven't even heard it? If it sounds crap it's not the end of the world, I'll just take it on the chin and move on. I've emailed a number of the previous Ebay buyers for these cables and have so far received some pretty good comments. I've said it before and I'll say it again - I might get lucky.

 

[Dan Osib]

As for the gauge thing I'm going to ring Harmonic Technologies tomorrow and email them the photos of this cable to see what they have to say about them.

 

[Hocky]

Man, some of you guys are taking this a bit too far. Is the cable going to be made with top dollar components? Probably not. Does that mean it'll be bad? Not really. There are plenty of chinese knock off products that are excellent quality. In fact, many top brand companies build on contract in china and those same manufacturers rebadge the exact same product and sell it out the back door at half price. We do a lot of work with Chinese companies and see these things all day long.

It may have been smarter to start with 1 or 2 cables, though. lol

 

[MiTT]

Man, some of you guys are taking this a bit too far. Is the cable going to be made with top dollar components? Probably not. Does that mean it'll be bad? Not really. There are plenty of chinese knock off products that are excellent quality. In fact, many top brand companies build on contract in china and those same manufacturers rebadge the exact same product and sell it out the back door at half price. We do a lot of work with Chinese companies and see these things all day long.

It may have been smarter to start with 1 or 2 cables, though. lol

Hmmmm.

We went to China for production on some of our product a few years ago. We're starting to bring that same production back to NA and CA because:

a.) We could never get a consistant level of quality (Cpk's were all over the map but never above .22 or so against a target of 1.33)

b.) We started noticing that we were competing against cheap knock off's of our own product in Asian markets. Despite our best efforts at containing vendors and confidentiality there were obvious leaks.

If you're dealing with an American or European company designing from their own point of origin you're likely to have some semblence of control, but if you're dealing with a company that is only trying to mimic what someone else is doing to an obvious price point I'd say buyer beware.

 

[Rich]

As for the gauge thing I'm going to ring Harmonic Technologies tomorrow and email them the photos of this cable to see what they have to say about them.

Here is a product page where they clearly state that AC-11 is 11 gauge. That is consistent with their naming policy. AC-10 uses 10 gauge, etc.

So it is pretty clear that the guy is intentionally lying to you. He said that they for sure used 9 gauge conductors and sent you a picture to "prove" it. He then said it was "genuine lengths of HT Pro AC-11" (which is an 11 gauge cable) and sent you another picture to "prove" it. So he is either lying about the gauge, lying about the type of cable, or (more likely) lying about both. If he will lie to you about one thing, he will lie to you about everything. It is highly unlikely that is HT cable or even high purity copper cable. Probably more likely it is standard copper electrical cable like what's available at any Lowe's or Home Depot.

I'm sorry to keep railing on this, but I just can't imagine why anyone would want to do business with someone on ebay based in China who is manufacturing knockoffs and lying to their potential customers about what they are actually made of? Just in the hopes that you may have stumbled upon the "deal of the century." P.T. Barnum's famous quote comes to mind.

 

[Dan Osib]

RICH,

So how come Cardas 9.5 Gauge Copper Chassis Cable when measured with a micrometer shows exactly 3.71mm diameter (bare copper/minus jacket).
3.71mm equates to nearly 6.5 AWG/Gauge but Cardas state that the cable is 9.5 Gauge. For your information Brian Von Bork (Technical Supervisor at Cardas) did all the measurements for me whilst I was on hold on the telephone. Check the following Wikipedia link to see for yourself http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_wire_gauge It's the same thing with other cable manufacturers too. Supra Lorad mains cable is rated at 2.5mm2 (area) which puts it in between the 13 and 14 AWG/Gauge range but when you actually measure the bare copper with a micrometer it shows 2.5mm diameter which equates to slightly less than 10 AWG/Gauge. You appear to know all the answers, how do you explain this?

 

[Rich]

You appear to know all the answers, how do you explain this?

You had the technical supervisor for Cardas on the phone . . . why didn't you ask him? (Instead of just wasting his time asking for measurements on a cable you probably had no intention of buying because it is too expensive for your tastes).

I'm sure you are right. Cardas and Harmonic Tech are lying about the gauge of their cables, and some unknown guy from China selling knockoffs on ebay is being absolutely honest. You probably have found the deal of the century here. Carry on.

 

[Gordon Gray]

Yes they do. I have used them for years. I changed over to DH Labs which to my ears give better results

Haven't done a shoot off between Signal Cable and DH Labs but I totally trust Rich regarding his observations on Signal Cable.

Having said that, I certainly like the DH Labs which, like the SC product line, likely offers (IMHO) great value for the money.

GG