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Legendary Musicality
Consisting of sixteen individual TCSS conductors, eight clear and eight white, arranged in a large format braid. Individual conductors are Hyper-pure copper and utilize our proven VariStrand™ conductor geometry. The insulating dielectric is a high pressure-low temperature-extruded Teflon®. The aggregate wire size is two 9 awg conductors. By virtue of its full, accurate and dimensional sound, 8TC ranks as one of the best high-end audio values of all time and, without question, is the best sounding moderately priced cable on the market.
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8TC
Basic Electrical Specifications
DUT: 8TC 2.5m bare wire ends.
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• (Cp) parallel capacitance:
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821.0 pF @ 20 kHz
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• (Ls) series inductance:
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0.345  H @ 20 kHz |
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• (Rdc) dc loop resistance:
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0.018  |
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• (Xt) total reactance:
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0.044 @ 20 kHz |
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• Frequency response ? 0.5 dB
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dc - 300 kHz
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전설적인 음악성
TCSS 도선을 사용하여 8 가닥의 파란색과 8 가닥의 검정색으로 이루어진 케이블로서 고압 저온에서 추출한 Teflon®피복이 사용되었으며 초고순도 동에 Varistrand 구조로 이루어졌습니다. 8TC는 꽉찬 음장감, 정확하고 입체적인 소리를 통하여 이미 많은 사용자들부터 합리적인 가격에 우수한 성능을 인정받고 있습니다.
* Eight blue and eight black braided conductors
* 2 x 9 awg / 6.62mm©
* Varistrand Hyper Pure Copper
* Teflon Dielectric
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The Audio Obersvatory
Volume 2 Number 10 June 1994
Kimber TC Series Speaker Cable Kimber Kable
2725 South 1900 West Ogden, UT 84401 801 .621.5530
4TC Bi-wire $9.20/foot; 8TC $8.60/foot;
PostMasterTM Spades $14/pair
I owned a pair of Kimber 4TC some years ago. Never had any complaints; easy to use, very clean. Somehow, probably as the result of an increase in disposable income (most likely imagined), the 4TC was replaced with ever more expensive, bulkier, and invariably flawed cables. Such is the plight of the audiophile puppy, for things have come full circle.
What happened was that I had a bunch of bi-wireable speakers come in for review. Always being one to at least try and hit two birds with one stone, I called the hep cats at Kimber and requested samples of their 4TC bi-wire and their 8TC. As regards number of conductors and effective AWG, both wires are the same.
The other night, I wondered who was the clown who first made a stiff, unwieldy speaker cable. Yes, Romex has been around for a few decades, but I mean something actually conceived as speaker cable. Fulton? Randall? I don't know, but I'd sure like to hunt him down and give him a few lashes with his own cable. I just don't see why speaker cable needs to double as a home protection device. My guess is that Ray Kimber and I are in accord on this point, for even his 9 gauge BTC is slinky and oh so easy to bend and coil and generally have fun with. Kimber products always seemed designed as complete products. Their excellent RCA jacks and plugs are simply the best. Now Kimber's added the PostMasterTM Spade. Usually, the words "Post Master"
are reserved for curse words, or check writing for stamps. Kimber PostMasters™ are much nicer
than Uncle Sam's.
At $14 a pair the PMs strike me as somewhat expensive, especially considering the modest cost of Kimber's Kables. They are basically a sandwich design with raised ridges on the part of the spade that's usually flat. The filling part of the sandwich is a silicon wafer that allows the spade to push back against the tightening of the post, allowing for secure connection with mere fingertight pressure. In fact I found that it was better to go with finger-tight, than the kinda-tight of a gently applied nut driver. With nice, strong posts I opt for the pretty damn tight of a firmly (not excessively) applied socket wrench. Either way, the PostMasters™ are the best production spades I've used. When I'm at my tweakiest, I make an arguably better spade from a solid copper welding lug made by Noble Wire and Terminal. But this is a labor intensive process, and I don't do it often. Anyway, the PMs are so good I may not bother again.
That's the deal with this Kimber stuff. It's so good, why bother? Both the 4TC and the 8TC are similarly characterless and uncolored. Both are superbly balanced, tonally, with admirably neutral and undramatic frequency extremes. As a friend of mine says, "You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a cable maker." This truism tends to make audiophiles somewhat lightheaded (with resulting light wallets), searching for the next best cable. Here's the truth: It ain't out there, folks.
When you consider the basic elements of cable construction (conductor, insulation and geometry) you will come to realize that there's no magic to be had. There is only the manipulation and variation of the elements listed above. So, after years of playing with this cable and that cable, and spending a lot of money, I've come to one inescapable conclusion: can't name a consistently better cable than the Kimber TCs.
Oh, take it easy. I 'm not saying that there is no better cable or that there'll never be a better cable. All that I'm saying is that for now, my search is over. The TC allows a continuing and reliable amount of musical truth to emerge from every speaker that I listened to over the last six months. Other cables, many costing way more than the reasonably priced Kimber, have been on hand and none of them strike me as being more fundamentally true and neutral. This is a good thing, gentle reader. You can rest assured of two facts: You can afford Kimber 8TC or 4TC. And, if you do choose to buy Kimber, no one on the block will own anything that beats it. Just go out and buy some!
Paul A. Cervantes |
