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Good and bad w/ replacing stock preamp jumpers?

In the past several days I replaced the stock preamp jumpers on my integrated ($2800 retail) with aftermarket jumpers. I was told once by an audiophile he felt that removing the stock jumpers on my integrated (the amp in question was an expensive one-$5k) for aftermarket jumpers can change the tonal balance of an integrated, thus changing the designers intended sonic presentation. What are your thoughts on this? What's your experience with aftermarket jumpers? Also, aren't the preamp jumpers perfoming the same function as interconnects do between a separate preamplifier and separate power amp? And if they are, why do most of these manufacturers use cheap pieces of metal to connect an integrated's preamp to amp? This occurs even in some of the better more expensive integrateds? Why not provide a quality connection that could conceivably improve the sonics of the unit? I've read where audiophiles with integrateds routinely replace these cheap metal jumpers with a quality interconnect and gain improvements. It makes no sense that a manufacturer spends the money on R&D to build a quality integrated with quality parts and then compromises it with a poor quality connection between the preamp and amp when there is all this hubbub in audiophilia about better and more exotic interconnects that will take your system to the next level. If the quality of interconnects are considered by almost everyone in the audio world to be so vital to an audio systems performace why is the quality of the preamp jumper no less important? Or am I way off base here? Thanks for your perspective.
foster_9
simon74
216 posts
 
I replaced the stock wires between pre & power sections in my Nu-Vista integrated..
About 5 inches of custom made KCAG with Eichmann Silver bullets gave a huge leap in transparency & detail and took the amp to an altogether higher level.
Si
foster_9 OP
1,638 posts
 
For me, it seems as though there has been a sonic improvement since I replaced the stock jumpers; not as much as I hoped however.
jond's avatar
jond
5,660 posts
 
I replaced the stock jumpers on my old Bryston B-60 with Tara Lab's The Missing Link. There was a definite change, the sound became more laid back, with a deeper and wider soundstage. With the stock jumpers the sound seemed a bit bright and two dimensional.
herman
2,215 posts
 
My experience has been that when someone states

it seems as though there has been a sonic improvement

there hasn't been any change, just what they had hoped to hear.

You describe them as being "cheap metal." Doesn't that pretty much describe every cable/connector known to man? Even the interconnects that cost a lot of money are actually made from "cheap metal."

There are traces on circuit boards inside the piece that are much, much longer than your jumpers and made from just as cheap metal.

In fact, you might have longer pieces of wire inside the integrated from the connector to the circuit boards. There are others here who claim great impovements from changing these 1 to 2 inch pieces of wire with very expensive sections of interconnects. You asked for perspectives, mine is that this is audiophile nervosa in the extreme.
adhoc
47 posts
 
The point is just to have as good metal inside the jumpers than anywhere else.
You can say, Herman, that it's cheap metal.
It's irrelevant : it's not expensive like platine, of course, but between silver in jumpers, for instance, and poor (really impure) copper jumpers I got with my speakers, though they were very expensive ones, there is a big difference of quality.
A difference that put good jumpers at the level of the whole wiring.

I haven't bought the most expensive jumpers (same brand as my cables), but good quality silver jumpers, not too expensive, and there has been a big improvement in sonic quality between thoses 2 pairs of jumpers.
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