After reading some posts here about MapleShade jumpers I went ahead and ordered them. But after a few hundred hours of continuous burn--in, I wasn't totally happy replacing the metal plate jumpers on my Aerius i speakers with the Mapleshade's unterminated exposed thin/flat copper jumpers.
My main speaker cables are Analysis Plus Oval Nines - running to the woofer binding posts. The Mapleshades seemed to add some warmth but never really relaxed. I also felt I had lost some finer ambient detail that adds to that "live" feeling. But for $20 (and supposedly same material in their $1,000 cables) it was worth the try. For those seeking totally honest comparisons, I had also treated both the metal plate jumpers and the Mapleshade jumpers with Caig pro gold xl.
But the Mapleshade jumpers gave me an idea. I originally didn't want to buy Analysis Plus jumpers (12s or 9s) for two reasons: with their spade connection they just wouldn't fit doubled up with Oval 9 spades in place and I just didn't want to go the banana plug route. Since Mapleshades were bare wire & unterminated, I called Analysis Plus to see if they would sell me a foot of unterminated Oval 9 cable. They agreed to it. And they would also seperate the positive and negative cables and shrink-tube the exposed cable. So I received two one foot pieces of Oval Nine for under $30 including parts, labor and shipping. One cable was their traditional purple color and the other was black. I cut off two three inch pieces from each and made two sets of jumpers by stripping off about 1/2 inch covering from each end to expose bare wire. I then treated the ends with pro gold xl. Since I had a foot I tried a few approaches and lengths: notched and unnotched. After experimenting, I finally stayed with the shortest (2")possible piece and unnotched. (Some may find this unterminated bare wire end approach a little sloppy to work with. But I didn't care about how it looked).
Now to the sound of my unterminated Oval Nine jumpers. Simply spectacular. A noticeable improvement over the stock jumpers and Mapleshade even with no burn-in. I immediately noticed there was overall greater detail and refinement to the sound, more depth to the sound-stage and more articulate seperation of instruments. Complex passages with many different instruments were easier to follow. The sound was relaxed and natural. Overall, the sound was just simply more coherent (time-phased?). After 100+ hours of burn-in the sound has opened up some more and is extremely clean and detailed.
So if you have Aerius i's and/or Analysis Plus cables and need jumpers give this inexpensive approach a try. Don't forget to use Pro Gold XL.
My main speaker cables are Analysis Plus Oval Nines - running to the woofer binding posts. The Mapleshades seemed to add some warmth but never really relaxed. I also felt I had lost some finer ambient detail that adds to that "live" feeling. But for $20 (and supposedly same material in their $1,000 cables) it was worth the try. For those seeking totally honest comparisons, I had also treated both the metal plate jumpers and the Mapleshade jumpers with Caig pro gold xl.
But the Mapleshade jumpers gave me an idea. I originally didn't want to buy Analysis Plus jumpers (12s or 9s) for two reasons: with their spade connection they just wouldn't fit doubled up with Oval 9 spades in place and I just didn't want to go the banana plug route. Since Mapleshades were bare wire & unterminated, I called Analysis Plus to see if they would sell me a foot of unterminated Oval 9 cable. They agreed to it. And they would also seperate the positive and negative cables and shrink-tube the exposed cable. So I received two one foot pieces of Oval Nine for under $30 including parts, labor and shipping. One cable was their traditional purple color and the other was black. I cut off two three inch pieces from each and made two sets of jumpers by stripping off about 1/2 inch covering from each end to expose bare wire. I then treated the ends with pro gold xl. Since I had a foot I tried a few approaches and lengths: notched and unnotched. After experimenting, I finally stayed with the shortest (2")possible piece and unnotched. (Some may find this unterminated bare wire end approach a little sloppy to work with. But I didn't care about how it looked).
Now to the sound of my unterminated Oval Nine jumpers. Simply spectacular. A noticeable improvement over the stock jumpers and Mapleshade even with no burn-in. I immediately noticed there was overall greater detail and refinement to the sound, more depth to the sound-stage and more articulate seperation of instruments. Complex passages with many different instruments were easier to follow. The sound was relaxed and natural. Overall, the sound was just simply more coherent (time-phased?). After 100+ hours of burn-in the sound has opened up some more and is extremely clean and detailed.
So if you have Aerius i's and/or Analysis Plus cables and need jumpers give this inexpensive approach a try. Don't forget to use Pro Gold XL.