May 30, 2011

• Cardas Cross, Part 6

  Ah, Memorial Day weekend.  High school seniors often have their proms.  College students on the semester system are gleefully ending their school year.  College students on the quarter system are enjoying their last break, before the stretch run and finals.  In 1991, I had come home to S.F. for the Memorial Day weekend.  I thoroughly enjoyed being back in the urban landscape.

  My gf was working at the little Ghirardelli chocolate store on Stockton.  After visiting her, I went to Ultimate Sound, then located in the dungeon of the Sherman Clay building on Kearny Street.  A couple doors up, on the corner of Kearny and Sutter, was a Wherehouse.  They were promoting the latest Lenny Kravitz album, Mama Said.  This album featured the wannabe Beatles tune, "Stand By My Woman;" and the collaboration with Slash (who was, at the time, still in Guns N' Roses), "Always On The Run."  But it was the Smokey Robinson-esque "It Ain't Over 'til It's Over," which stopped me dead in my tracks.  Later that summer, "It Ain't Over 'til It's Over" would peak at #2 [being kept out by Bryan Adams' "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You"].  Ever since then, this soulful song has always reminded me of downtown San Francisco.  I love it, when adult contemporary stations (especially S.F.'s 96.5 KOIT) keep this song in rotation.
  
  When I did go back to UC Santa Cruz on Memorial Day 1991, I was only slightly bummed.  I thought to myself, "Just a few more weeks, and the school year will mercifully end."  To keep me from being depressed, I immersed myself in Stereophile magazines, then in digest size.  I recall eating in the dining halls.  I was probably the only audiophile there.  I was happy to strike up a conversation with a friend, who said that, if he had the money, he'd choose Carver over NAD, Nakamichi, and Yamaha.  And of course, de rigueur for the time, he said he wanted Monster Cable.  I don't know what came over me.  Maybe it was Cardas' shell logo looking like something found in the Santa Cruz hills.  Maybe I was just bored with my bland AudioQuest cables.  But I told my friend that I wanted "natural-sounding Cardas cables."  Like everyone else at UCSC, my friend had never heard of Cardas.

  Back in 1991, audiophiles insisted on getting spades.  I've been on Audio Asylum since the late 90s.  Since then, I have been extolling the virtues of banana plugs.  And that has nothing to do with UCSC's mascot being the banana slug.  Perhaps because of my efforts, audiophiles one-by-one have been switching from spades to bananas.  Many have e-mailed me, thanking me for having the courage to speak up against the old audiophile blind allegiance to spades.
  
  Nowadays, due to Europe's safety regulations, binding posts make it difficult or impossible to use spades.  Such is the case with the plastic sleeve wrapped around WBT binding posts.  If your equipment and/or speakers use these safety-regulated binding posts, you have no choice, but to buy speaker cables with bananas.

  Okay, during Memorial Day weekend, high school seniors have sex after their proms.  Celebrating the end of finals, college students on the semester want to get in one last romp, before leaving for the summer.  Enjoying the lull before finals, college students on the quarter system go on spring flings.  Hey, don't look at me.  In 1991, while visiting a Santa Cruz stereo store [Water Street Stereo, perhaps?  I think it was on a hill, not too far from the ocean.  I do know that it was NOT Recycled Stereo Plus], I was listening to some fuzzy-sounding Acoustat Spectra loudspeakers.  I spotted a customer getting giddy.  He had some braided Kimber Kable speaker cable, terminated in bananas.  He was plugging and unplugging it into the back of a speaker.  He giggled, "This is like sex without a condom!"
  
  That forever colored my view of inserting banana plugs into binding posts.  Be that as it may, you've already seen the Cardas bananas go into the CCGR posts on the Cable Cooker.  Well, the Cardas banana also fits nicely into bare, "non-protected" binding posts, such as the WBTs found on Totem loudspeakers [pictured above], and Michells on ProAcs.  Giggle if you want about sex.  But it's nice to know that the Cardas banana works better, and is more convenient, than spades.  So go have some unprotected fun, and order bananas.  Alas, if your equipment (such as Jeff Rowland and Joseph Audio) only accepts spades, you may order the Cardas Cross in a variety of spade lugs. 
  

  • 3:37 am
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