Kimber Monocle XL, Part 2
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| Posted on May 18, 2024 at 22:39:13 | ||
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Posts: 7739
Location: Bay Area Joined: December 11, 2000 |
The Kimber Monocle XL makes me think about their own 4VS (the very first Kimber product I got to try) and 4TC (the very first Kimber speaker cable I actually bought). These are their stories.  My friend Kim spent the night of Thursday, January 14, 1993, at my UC Santa Cruz apartment. The next day, she and I went to our respective morning classes. However, we made arrangements with our classmates, to take notes for our afternoon classes. Kim and I skipped those, in order to spend the MLK weekend at my parents' place in San Francisco. We took the #1 city bus to the Santa Cruz Metro station. From there we took a shuttle bus to the San Jose Caltrain station. We took Caltrain to San Francisco (7th & Townsend), where my dad picked us up.  On Saturday, 1/16/93, Kim and I went to Union Square. We also stopped at Ultimate Sound. I had previously bought a few AudioQuest products from them. But this time, they cut Kimber 4VS [photo above, taken from Kimber Kable] from a spool, and tinned the ends.  Kim and I dropped our stuff (including the 4VS) off at my parents' place, and then spent time at Japantown. Actually, the last time I saw Kim was at Japantown.  Back in Santa Cruz, Kim and I trudged up the hill, to get to my apartment. She had already spent lots of time there, and knew the Sony CDP-520ESII/Adcom GTP-400 & GFA-535/Pinnacle PN-5+ stereo system well. She'd never seen any cable look like the braided Kimber 4VS, and was eager to try it.  I had the Kimber 4VS for a few weeks. We used it and our older AQ Type 4, between the Adcom GFA-535 and Pinnacle PN-5+. Kim liked Madonna's "Deeper And Deeper." After a few swaps of speaker cables, Kim looked perplexed. She came to the conclusion that the AQ Type 4 and Kimber 4VS sounded different from each other, but neither was superior or inferior to the other. The next time I went home, I brought the 4VS back to Ultimate Sound.  I graduated in June 1993, then moved back home. At the end of 1993, memory of the 4VS intact, I bought my very first Kimber speaker cable, the 4TC.  Which brings us to the Monocle XL [photo above taken from Kimber Kable]. This product uses twelve VS conductors for negative, twelve TC conductors for positive.  In this photo [also taken from Kimber Kable], you can see the 24 total conductors, intertwined around a center core. The entire product is then encased in a plastic mesh.  The Monocle XL is about 1.125" in diameter. It does not twist helically. And because of that 1.125" thickness, the Monocle XL will arch, but not bend. While the VS series has been discontinued, the TC series, after all these decades, still thrives. The girls had no qualms about the skinny 4VS and 4TC. The Monocle XL costs several times the 4TC, but from a physical standpoint, can make audiophiles overcome their inadequacies. -Lummy The Loch Monster
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