I picked up some kimber kable 4VS off ebay really cheap. I couldnt resist, because I was interested and they were so much cheaper than retail. (I paid $30.05 for 24 ft of it, shipped to my door. The retail is $3.30/ft. I paid $1.25/ft shipped, which is actually a little less than a local store sells the lower line 4PR.)

Anyway. So I inspected the wires(actually had to cut off the "terminations" the previous owner did.....soldered tips. I never understand this. I mean I did it when I was in middle school, thinking I was all audiophile-like, but honestly I hate that. All it does is leave the wire all covered in green corrosion from the solder. NASTY.

So upon inspecting an individual strand of the wire(the 4VS consists of 8 strands, 4 positive and 4 negative. the are equvalent to a normal set of 13 awg wires combined) I found that contrary to my belief, what looked to be just any old copper wire was not. It is actually made up of 7 strands of wire. 4 of them are very small, 2 are a little larger, and one is somewhat thick(like the strands of "cheesy" speaker wire, aka the cheap white or brown wire from radio shack, not "mega cable"). I compared that to some random piece of 24 awg wire I had. In this case the random wire, each lead had 20 strands of very small wire.


Maybe this is what kimber means by "VariStrand"...

With all the reading on here about wires being hype, I was glad that there are PHYSICAL differences between this wire and the run of the mill stuff I have dealt with. My RadioShack "mega-cable" is the same as the random wire, in the sense that it is just a large amount of very small strands making up each 16 awg lead. They just have the "nice" clear plastic insulation. Now I'm not arguing that this difference makes them better, or makes them sound better. I listened to them a little, after playing the exact same music (all levels/settings the same) with my old wire. It seemed like there was a difference, but I will have to do more comparisons. Obviously what differences in the sound there are(if they exist) are small. I'm not going to lie.