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AR3 Jumpers


gary_wong5

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The nickel jumpers connecting 'T' and 'M' should be used for correct AR timbre? I experimented changing them with CAT5 Ethernet cable, the sound has opened up and clear. Or my original jumpers are oxidized so deteriorating sound?

Based on the photo, your jumpers are in especially bad shape. I have never seen them in that condition. Are you sure they are original? They almost look like rusty paper clips. :)

Roy

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Different jumper sounds differently. Will it be only original jumper gives the correct AR sound?

It is just a piece of tinned copper wire. Your jumpers were corroded.

Neither the original jumper or ethernet cable have any magical properties.

Roy

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I don't know what the plating material is (Tom Tyson may know), but the core is copper, which is easily seen by scraping a small area of the wire.

Roy

Roy's exactly correct: the jumpers are simply pieces of tinned copper (single-strand) wire, and there would be no possible difference in sound if it were substituted with something else unless that new material was corroded or perhaps not made from copper. It's a simple jumper. Some obsessive ones (including myself) have made small jumpers with Thomas & Betts (or AMP, Hollingworth, 3-M or similar) ring-terminal, solderless connectors to make a slightly better contact with the binding post, but there could never be any difference in sound. It is basically overkill, I'm the first to admit it, but the connection is tighter.

The picture shows the type solderless ring terminal I have used in the past, but a much smaller version would be used with a short piece of copper solid-strand wire. The ring makes a more positive connection than wrapping the wire, but it just a safer way to do it. Overall, however, the simple little tinned-copper strand of wire, looped on the end in the direction of the threads, is 100% sufficient. If you want to go off the deep end, you can put terminals on the wire.

The pictures shows a Thomas & Betts Ring-type solderless terminal for 10-12 ga wire used for speaker wire on a pair of AR-3a speakers, and in this case, I inserted the wire too far into the barrel of the terminal. Usually the wire barely shows on the ring side. For the AR "jumper" cable, a much smaller (18-22 ga) terminal would be used but crimped with the same-type tool:

The other two pictures show the Thomas & Betts WT-145A Crimping Tool. This is considered the "standard" of the mil-spec "solderless-terminal" crimping tools, but new ones ($600+) are very expensive. Used ones are not bad on eBay.

--Tom Tyson

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Tom Tyson,

Jumpers with and without Thomas & Betts ring-terminals have audible difference on my bi-wiring Spica TC-60.

Someone told me that even household miniature circuit breakers (various brands) will affect sound, too.

Gary_Wong,

Basically... copper wire is going to sound the same without any detectable difference in sound when a short piece of copper wire is used. The connection to the terminal posts might be a factor if contact is poor, but the wire itself -- especially since the length of wire is so short -- should make no difference whatsoever. It's also hard to imagine differences in sound caused by using special receptacles and AC plugs, and especially circuit breakers. Small-gauge speaker wire run for very long distances into low-impedance loads can cause some damping and high-frequency roll-off issues, but for jumper cables short in length, it's really hard to imagine any difference.

—Tom Tyson

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  • 2 months later...

Writeup of AR's Guru from Taiwan. He also pointed out the inferiority of original jumpers (for those understand Chinese).

http://m.xuite.net/blog/amp250guy/twblog/146903405

Thanks for the Interesting article(if one can wade through the even more interesting Google translation). I stopped worrying about the effect different cables/speaker wires have on my system a long time ago. Way too easy to get OCD about it. That said, seems like an easy enough experiment to conduct if one was interested.

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