Munich 2013

A.J. van den hul showed me a spool of carbon nanotube conductor that's ultra-thin and flexible. It's also very expensive at this point.

Each strand is about 3 microns in diameter. Nineteen are put together to make one conductor.van den hul claims it's the only cable with conduction at the wave's "zero crossing line".

He produced a demo comparing it to copper wire and the difference was impressive. Using it required it to be inserted into insulation tubes and so far it can only be crimped to plugs and not soldered, but many say crimping sounds better anyway.

Once he's puts it into production in a more user-friendly package, he claims prices will drop considerably. I asked about its use as a tone arm wire, which seems a natural given it's light weight and flexibility and he said its ultra-low resistance (75 ohm per meter) makes it ideal in that application.

He also introduced the new Crimson moving coil cartridge (about $5500) and balanced and unbalanced versions of the new Grail phono preamp priced respectively at circa $17,000 and $7000. The specs were impressive as was the tech. It uses passive LCR equalization and given the ultra-low output of some van den hul cartridges you'd hardly be surprised to learn that it's capable of up to 73dB of gain in the MC input. Loading is accomplished automatically. Yet another phono preamplifier that demands to be reviewed!