Cable Asylum: REVIEW: White Lightning Yardmaster Cable by Epstein

Model:	Yardmaster
Category:	Cable
Suggested Retail Price:	$50.00
Description:	DIY ICs and speaker cables
Manufacturer URL:	White Lightning

Review by Epstein on June 16, 2008 at 03:42:54
IP Address: 75.143.208.132 Add Your Review
for the Yardmaster

Built according to the instructions in the review, these cables are the first DIY recipe I've tried that sound as good, not just different, as I always hope for. Better, in fact.

The only depsrture I made from the design Jeff Day describes is that, for the interconnects, I used all 3 wires, 2 for the ground. There's plenty of room in the Switchcraft RCAs for 2 ground wires, twisted together and tinned. It may not be clear to you from the pix in the article (it wasn't to me at first) that the ground wires are trapped between the 2 ears that get crimped down around them. That helps shield the ground from the hot.

Be careful of the heat you use. The dialectric has a very low melting point and too much heat easily melts it causing a short. Ask me how I know. I used the 600 degree F. setting on my Hakko, around 45 watts.

The pix also show the bare wires being soldered; do tightly twist and tin them first. The RCAs are made of a very thin metal, the sheath melts easily as stated above, and the less heat applied, the better. The metal is so thin and light, in fact, that I found it essential to tape the barrels and finger clamp the wires to my bench to keep everything aligned before applying solder.

One other essential tweak to the recipe is to apply some shrink tubing over the hot pin and exposed wire as seen in the first picture. Once again, the metal is so thin it bends easily and may come in contact with the ground collar. How many RCAs went in the waste basket? Let's just say I'm on my second order of 24! No sacrifice is too great for our art.

Just as Jeff Day writes, the speaker cables have the preponderance of the characteristic sound of these cables. The interconnects used on their own have the same general flavor but much less of it. Conversely, the speaker cables used with other ICs, 89259 terminated with Eichmanns, for example, exhibit much of the full flavor of a 100% White Lightning set-up.

About $50 worth of Yardmaster power cord, Switchcraft RCAs and Swiss-made bananas (sourced from Audio Magus) supplied 3 pairs of 3' ICs and a pair of speaker cables to fully White Lightning my rig.

For some context, I have used or built MAC, anti-Cables, MIT AV-1, cross-connects, magnet wire of every gauge, CAT 5, 89259, and employed terminations from Radio Shack thru Eichamnn and on to both cryo'd and non-cryo'd Vampire 800C. None of these combinations sound as good in my rig as the White Lightning. None of them exhibited as large a change in the sound, either. In my experience, cables all make a difference but until now, I mostly had to strain, study and ponder to discover what that difference was. The WLs, OTOH, hit you in the head with a left shoe.

These cables sound BIG! First thing I noticed was bigger bass, then a wider image and slightly larger than life singers and players. I heard all the notes that more analytical cables present while at the same time,they were...well, ... less analytical.

Both my DIY 45 and Classe Model 70 amplifiers tend to have a bit of treble emphasis in my lively room. Not at all a bad thing to my aged ears. The White Lightning roll that off a bit but cymbals still have a better-than-ever shimmer and violins and alto sax go high and tight without any screech or shout. Playing the Brahms Double with Rostropovich, Oistrakh and Szell/Cleveland, there was none of the boiled-over Columbia treble emphasis that definitely exists on this recording. The cello was truly gorgeous but the real stand out, Oistrakhs violin, as whatever these cables do to the highs they take away the brightness and leave the sheen. The same was true on Count Basie, 'Chairman Of The Board'. There are tom-tom thwacks that startle and the brass section crescendos are rich without losing any 'bite'. On the other hand, Alison Krauss still makes you want to dash around the house and tape up the window glass.

Even with the emphasized bass, all the instruments and voices still have wonderful tone. Really, the White Lightning cables yield perfect instrumental timbre. My JBL 2226 mid-woofers need all the help they can get down low; high efficiency means there's little output below 40 Hz. Having more powerful bass while still being able to pick out the bassoons from massed woodwinds is an absolute treat. Better still, once you've discovered the parts and pieces that result from installing them in your system you'll just want to recline a bit and listen to music.

A trip to Wal-mart is such fun, too. Listen to Rodney Carrington on the drive over: "attention Wal-mart shoppers, it's 8 o'clock, time to beat your kids">

Product Weakness:	Frequency spectrum may not be right for all systems<br>Low melting point of dialectric
Product Strengths:	Powerful bass, instrumental timbre, low price.

Associated Equipment for this Review:

Amplifier: Clase Model 70, DIY 45
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated): sometimes PRC pot passive, other times heavily modified ARC LS-1
Sources (CDP/Turntable): VPI HW-19 Mk IV, SME III, Benz Ace L
Speakers: 2-way Pi Theatre 4 clones
Cables/Interconnects: as reviewed
Music Used (Genre/Selections): Classical, Jazz, new Grass
Room Size (LxWxH): 17.5 x 11.5 x 8
Room Comments/Treatments: DIY Ethan Winer traps
Time Period/Length of Audition: from 50 hours on
Type of Audition/Review: Product Owner

Amplifier:	Clase Model 70, DIY 45
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated):	sometimes PRC pot passive, other times heavily modified ARC LS-1
Sources (CDP/Turntable):	VPI HW-19 Mk IV, SME III, Benz Ace L
Speakers:	2-way Pi Theatre 4 clones
Cables/Interconnects:	as reviewed
Music Used (Genre/Selections):	Classical, Jazz, new Grass
Room Size (LxWxH):	17.5 x 11.5 x 8
Room Comments/Treatments:	DIY Ethan Winer traps
Time Period/Length of Audition:	from 50 hours on
Type of Audition/Review:	Product Owner