Another customer knows why ICONOCLAST exists. It was just an experiment with superior electrical IC and speaker cable, and if it really matters. Well, we seem to have some pretty consistent remarks about that. Thank you msimanyi for giving our products an audition. We would not market them if they weren’t truly better measure cable.
Best,
Galen
@rower30 After I complete my speaker cable audition, I think my next effort will be a set or two of XLR interconnects.
How would you characterize the effects of TPC vs OCC? Anyone else is invited to chime in as well, if you’ve auditioned both.
To me TPC is most forward, OFE is great in XLR not as forward. OCC is detailed and puts soundstage behind the front wall. More depth more of everything. OCC steps up to whatever cable or equipment change you make in power or digital cables. I tried the mix and match XLR coppers to save dollars but my ears wanted the OCC.
If you can’t afford spring for OCC go OFE but don’t try the OCC. OCC is more natural along with revealing, even if your running stock power cables and no regenerator. Later mods really shine.
What he 
said!
Most say that the UP OCC is the most neutral. But, with the series II the differences are mitigated by the improved design changes in the cable over the series I. That’s exactly what we want, to get the TPC to be better than the UP OCC in the series I IC cables. And, the series II TPC is cheaper than the UP OCC series I. Design is most important BEFORE the copper.
I can’t get my GTI to go faster just by changing the tires, the fundamental car is more important, and if the car is greatly improved the tires won’t hold it back but sure, a better tire can now be leveraged even farther.
That’s the general concept of ICONOCLAST. Mess with the DESIGN before you apply materials. Get the best design so any materials you use are pushed as far as you can go, and that improves the VALUE since less material performance is left on the table using an inferior design. Materials can’t improve a design’s R, L, C and Vp. They are unchanged by copper materials tertiary minor draw science properties. The best design is ALWAYS going to be better than the lesser design no matter the copper used. THAT I know from the measurements.
Of course, the copper changes in series II will offer differing flavors of sound, too, just not as course in timberal balance. Some of the analog non linearity is designed out in the series II in the analog frequencies.There is now less to “hear” since the improvements and changes are across all the cables. We only change the copper in ICONOCLAST, not the design, in a construction.
OK true, the BAV XLR is the exception. Here I had to change the dielectric to meet an over reaching requirement, flexibility, and keep 95% or more of the electrical measurements. The BAV XLR also had to be AES/EBU digital and analog, both. This restricts the conductor design (no quad conductor stranding) so we maintain durability an a 100 ohm impedance for digital. This is the “optimization” for studio use.
Also true, do NOT use the speaker cable auditions to pigeon hole the IC cables copper choices, it won’t work. You need to start over for each. Even if he copper is the same type, the LOADING on the driver circuits respond differently to the cable properties.
ICONOCLAST was intended to bring superior electrical at as affordable prices as possible with the TPC copper. The better copper is always going to be a jump in price and sound different and not always the same for everyone. Since we COMPRESSED the prices as best we could for the IC and speaker cable, we don’t go from 1K to 35K cables, it will allow more people to realistically save for what they really want. No, still not everyone as this hobby adds up fast but we honestly try to get you farther for less.
The system components you can get starting out eclipses what I had available to me in the 1970’s by many orders of magnitude. Don’t for a minute think you can’t get high-end today at a far, far better entry point price. And yes, that includes cable.
Best,
Galen
After auditioning all Iconoclast material offerings for both the XLRs and RCAs, my clear preference is the OCC. I found OCC in both cases to give a far more natural reproduction of instruments that I’m familiar with as a musician.
I had series 1 SPTPC Speaker cables with gen 2 XLR copper comparison.
Today my system is gen OCC XLR and TPC series2 and SPTPC biwire spaeker cables
The beauty of it is that you get to decide. Your system, your ears and whatever you choose is right.
Speaking of pricing, has the Belden Iconoclast web site been updated to reflect pricing for the Type II TPC speaker cable line. Maybe I’m not looking hard enough but I see no pricing much less mention of the product. 
Iconoclast Speaker Cables
I think Bob mentioned it’s not been updated due to the amount of material on hand.
…I may have imagined that… 
I believe you are correct. Material supply is very limited.
^^ I can get used to that statement.
We can error in two ways;
-) over promise on ordered cable and say we have it, and quickly don’t.
-) have it but in limited QTY so it is a “controlled” distribution and isn’t expected to be in stock too long.
What’s true? I arrived at a PRODUCTION setting, but do not have production QTY on the shake out runs. A lot was used to dial it in. Ya, we paid for all that loss too! And, we paid for all the time the machine was waiting for me to test and verify all the electrical. This is just the reality of production. We “rent” the time and make use of it as efficiently as possible with as much MATERIAL run as we can in that set time cost. Add it all up and there is your price in Standard Allotted Hours of time and BOM, both.
The first distribution method can get people upset when we say we have it, but we really don’t in production QTY. So we decided to do the SECOND approach and LIMIT the QTY such that out of stock is warned in advance.
This is a hard cable to make and requires a complete re set-up at the factory and lots of hand holding…the machines can’t be ignored too long before operator intervention is needed for load-outs as it is a SHORT process. You can only put so much bonded pair on a bobbin in the specialized braider used to make ICONOCLAST. We have ONE super duper braider to make this product. And, those 24 bobbins are all hand wound where production bare copper comes pre-wound. We are re-inventing how a braider is used with inslated bonded pairs.
Best,
Galen
Thanks for the insight. When do you predict that the TPC Gen II may be available in predictable quantities?
series 2
weedeewop,
We do have stock for now, but CHECK with Bob Howard as he will know when we run out. We just don’t want orders we can’t fill, so we STOP the press when we can’t deliver. We are in the process of getting SPTPC and TPC speaker cable production going.
We have the TPC singles (we ran a BIG spool off the extruder) but not the SPTPC, so we’ll need to add that process for the singles and again, this is a special set-up but not too bad. We can run a decent QTY of singles to have on hand to remove the start-up and shut-down costs. Yep, we just hold the singles for later production.
Best,
Galen
Galen,
I wonder if you could post a couple of pics of the production floor without giving any intellectual property away. I think a lot of folks here would be surprised at the machinery it takes to make these cables.
Vern
Singles as in singles versus bi-wire speaker cables? A comparo with the TPC and SPTPC ver. II could be most interesting, especially in a single wire configuration.
I meant the extrusion process that makes the BONDED pair of wires, cojoined. This is the building block of the speaker cables. It all starts with the two bare wires covered with FEP and cojoined.
This is done on a HIGH SPEED plastic extrusion line with HIGH SPEED FEP melt index extrudate at 1000-1800 feet/minute fast. Get it right or get a LOT of scrap FAST.
Here is ONE of the two wires. That spool weight about 450 pounds, some wire feed for LARGE production is 1200 pounds!, and the hair thin wire is feed off with ZERO “stretch” or damage that would change it’s dimension.
