The Guerrilla Philosophy, What Makes Wire Sound Good, Audio's Dirty Little Secret, How do we do it for less, and What does this mean for you?

The Guerrilla Philosophy

Everything, and I do mean everything, in the path of your music alters the sound in some way.
This is a simple, unavoidable fact. With cables, thin wire sound better than fat wire (and has better bass too). Short cables are better than long ones. With speakers and components every internal part has a signature sound, so we like our equipment to have as few parts as possible. With fewer parts, the quality of those parts is dramatically emphasized, so it's important to only use the best. Less is more in accurate sound reproduction. I want my music altered as little as possible, making it identical to what the recording engineer wants me to hear. That's exactly what our cables are engineered to do. Add nothing...remove the garbage...hear everything within your music.

Only the best for me please.
We take this idea of using the best parts an apply it our building our products. We only make the best products we can. Personally, I feel that you should do a few things really, really well, rather than many things that are only mediocre. So, we only make a few products. By focusing all our energies on these designs, instead of 20 different ones, we are able to provide you with truly remarkable products at unremarkable prices.

The magic in your music is between the notes.
The emotion in your music isn't in the notes of the music, it is in the spaces between the notes. You need quality equipment to reveal these spaces. Most of you probably already have equipment that's more than capable enough, but your system isn't sounding as good as you know it can. We make cables that remove all that grunge, garbage, and noise that is filling up those spaces. This gives your music the space it needs to sound great. We get you the pure sound.

More than your money's worth.
Our cables loaded with value. They perform at a level that only the highest quality cables perform, only ours cost less. We have all our wire made just for us, exactly to our specifications. We don't spend big money on magazine advertising (read the 'Dirty Little Secret of high end Audio' below to find out just how easy it is to spend $250,000.00 to advertise in two, yes just 2, magazines). We use the money we save from advertising to make you better products. Better products means happy clients. Happy clients tend to show off their gear. That's all the advertising we need!

Save me money please.
We only sell factory direct. By doing so we can provide you a vastly superior product at prices nobody can touch! We even make it absolutely risk free for you with our 45-day Unconditional Bullet-Proof Guarantee. Here's my pledge to you...If your not absolutely, positively, 100% blown away with how good they sound, I'll give you your money back. You won't be out a dime! I don't know how to be any more fair than this.

4 rock-solid conclusions on what makes cables sound like a million bucks

Although I have ranked them in this order, these factors are so closely related that each has a dramatic effect in the quality of the output-your music.

Here they are:

Quality and type of conductor material
Construction method
Conductor size
Insulation material

Let me explain:

Quality and Type of conductor
The raw metals used to make wire have a drastic effect on the tendency of the finished cable to alter the music signal. Wire that has good conduction qualities and fewer impurities will alter the signal less than a poor quality conductor. Very pure wire with high conductivity (like the 99.9995% pure Guerrilla Silver® and the 99.9999% pure Guerrilla Copper® metals we use) can have virtually no effect on the signal.

Well Jason, if ultra-pure wires are so good why isn't everybody using them? Simply put, because they are so much more expensive than standard grades of wire. High purity metals, like the Guerrilla wires we use, can cost as much as 300 times more than the same size 'regular' wire. That 'regular' wire is fast annealed. It does not sound as good.

Something else to watch out for is jeweler's silver. Some people will try to use jewlers wire for audio cable. This wire doesn't sound good at all with a nice stereo. In fact, this is the kind of silver with that many people describe as harsh. Don't fall for this! You'll be very dissappointed with what you hear.

Fast annealing is the standard method used to make wire. It is a process where the wire is formed at a much lower temperature and with much more force. The result is a wire that has a rough surface and many imperfections. But it is a fast and inexpensive way to make wire. Our soft-annealing process uses much more heat and much less pressure to form our raw wire. The result is an ultra smooth wire that sounds better.

In general, Silver cables present music with a characteristic fast and ultra-accurate sound. Copper has a slightly warmer and more laid back presentation.

Construction method
How the cable is assembled with respect to the individual conductors and their relationship with each other drastically affects the interaction between the conductors. Wires that are in close proximity to one another will try to influence each other. This affects the sound quality as well as the amount of resistance you amplifier sees.

Placing two conductors side by side (as with a basic 'zip-cord' speaker cable) creates a simple capacitor. Capacitors store energy and poorly designed cables can cause your amps to work harder to overcome this. Using a cable with an excessively high number of individual conductors can also create a very high capacitance cable.

Over time these cables can damage an amplifier due to the difficulty to play through them. Cables with high inductance affect the sound quality in just as many ways as a high capacitance cable is able to do. Our cables balance these factors to provide you the most clear and honest music picture possible.

Conductor size Large conductors alter the sound through the skin effect. The easiest way around the skin effect is to use a small conductor. You must go smaller than 20 AWG (the bigger the AWG number, the skinnier the wire). The size of each individual conductor has a big impact on the overall alteration of the signal. I am talking about the size of each individual conductor, not the finished cable. In fact, this skin effect has such a big effect on the sound quality that it was a toss-up between conductor material and size as the most important.

Let me tell you about this villain "The Skin Effect"
In case you are not familiar with the skin effect, here is a brief discussion. The Skin Effect is the tendency of the electric signal (energy in the form of electricity-also known as your music) to travel along the outside (the skin) of the wire more quickly and more easily than energy traveling down the center of the wire.

Why is this? Most of us were taught in school that electrons (the energy that is the music signal) are discrete little particles that travel down the center of a wire in the same way that water travels down a pipe. Well, that isn't exactly true. In fact, it's not even close to true. Electrons are closer to an energy "cloud" than a particle. Because of this, they want to travel along the skin (along the outer edge) of the wire. Why? There is less resistance to the flow of electricity on the skin of the wire.

This means electricity travels faster on the skin of the wire. In the center of the wire the electrons are slowed down by traveling through the mass of the wire. These electron clouds are actually crashing into the molecules that make up the wire itself, slowing them down.

By the time the signal arrives at the other end of the wire the music has become distorted and the phase of the signal is now smeared. Some of the signal gets there really fast (the part traveling along the skin of the wire) and some of it is delayed (the part traveling through the center of the wire). This causes the signal to arrive at the end of the wire at slightly different times.

The longer and thicker the conductor, the more drastic the effect. This results in a gritty sound with poorly defined imaging, sloppy bass, and highs that are just not quite right. To simplify, big fat conductors smear the sound. If it is not necessary to use a fat conductor, it is absolutely necessary not to use a fat conductor!

Insulation material
I include this below conductor size because it is directly related to the skin effect, but it is just as important. As discussed earlier, the music signal is traveling on or near the surface of the wire (the skin). Because of this the insulation also has a major impact on the quality and resolution of the sound.

PVC is the most common wire insulator. It is used because it insulates well, but more so because it is cheap. However, PVC has a very strong impact on the music signal. Other materials exist that are much better for use with hi-end audio systems. Teflon® is a great insulator to use in audio cables because it insulates very well, and at the same time it has very little effect on the sound. It is preferred for its ability to insulate without changing the character of the sound. The biggest drawback to Teflon? The cost. It is more expensive than PVC, but it sounds way better and that is why we use it.

If you add all these factors together, you can create something remarkable. That is exactly what we have done. We engineered the best materials and we use the best designs. We isolated good qualities in cables and emphasized them, while at the same time banishing the poor qualities. In the end we have created cables that are as good as any at almost any price! I know it sounds simple, and it is! Cable construction is not an art as so many would have you believe. It's just simple Physics and Engineering.

Ready for the 'Dirty Little Secret’ of High End Audio?

If you read our Guerrilla Guide to Great Sound you know I was on the inside.  I know the secret. Now you will too!   In a nutshell, Audio gear is marked up by huge amounts and you are paying way more than you have to. Why?

Watch out for the big full-page advertisement.
Magazine ads are making audio products so expensive that they are now out of reach of most people. To remain competitive in the marketplace, companies that use magazine advertising must sell at a higher price in order to earn enough to pay for their huge advertising costs.

Just how big are these advertising fees anyway? Phenomenal.
To place full page color ads in just 2 of the leading audio magazines will cost as much as $11,000.00 per issue. Some magazines are more and some are less, but this is a fair number. If there are 12 issues of each magazine, that is a yearly advertising price of ($11,000*12 issues*2 different magazines) $264,000.00!!!! That is more than a quarter of a million dollars and the Advertising Company has not even been paid for creating the ads.

Now, think about this for a moment. We are talking more than a quarter of a million dollars in advertising costs for ONLY 2 MAGAZINES! I can pick up a dozen different magazines and find ads by the same companies...that means that they are spending somewhere around 1.5 Million annually!  We are talking serious money. Cash that comes directly from their customers. Like I have been saying all along, we don't do advertising. We save our money and make you better cables!

Stereo shops make big money on accessories and they don't like competition.
100%+ is normal. Speakers and components are usually a little less. Cables and accessories are the "gravy" of profits. The big companies use "persuasion" and "rewards" to prevent brand swapping. They will do things like giving a salesperson a free cable for every 5 they sell, or they will mark down the cost so a shop will buy their brand in order to prevent a "new" brand of cables from being sold in that shop. Do you really think these people have your best sound in mind if they are trying to sell 5 more of "X brand" cables in order to get one free (that they will probably sell on Ebay anyway!)?

A little markup goes a long way.
In a typical distribution process, everybody makes a profit, usually 100% or more of the price they pay.  For accessories it is usually more. A little less for gear. Once the products make it to the marketplace, an item that has a cost of $300.00 will likely sell for $1200.00 or more, easily.  I even know of companies that mark up their cost by 8 (eight) to find their selling price!  By marking it up so much, they are able to pay for the massive advertising costs in those big glossy magazines.

Another overlooked factor driving costs up is repeated shipping.  It doesn't seem like much but your average 6 foot power cord weighs a couple of pounds.  After it has traveled from the raw materials manufacturer to the builder of the cable, then to a wholesaler and then to the stereo store this shipping can add up to $25 or even more.  That $25 will get marked up again before the cable gets sold to you. It's likely to add as much as $50 overall to the price of the cable.  (Did I tell you I majored in Marketing and Finance in college?  It amazes me just how much advertising and distribution adds to the price of any product!)

Don't supersize me!
Another way costs are driven are from the amount of raw materials used.  The ultra-pure silver and copper wires we use in our cables is pricey.  But it sounds really good!  For the best in accurate and believable music reproduction the wire needs to be the appropriate size-but not too big!  Most companies market their cables with a 'one size is good for everybody' approach (as in this cable is as good with your 4 watt/channel SET as it is with your 800 watt/channel beast-which is absolutely untrue).  Not us. 
 
We want you to get the best performance from your equipment.

And that depends on your needs.  If you are using "shotgun" speaker cables with your 8-watt 300B single-ended tube amp, it is like driving a Ferrari on a dirt road.  Sure, you can do it, but you can't realize the full performance of your equipment.  (Read the Guerrilla Guide to Great Sound to learn more about the shotgun cable myth.)  Those big fat cables not only smear the sound, they cost more to make.  And if you don't need them you are just wasting your money on the excess material.

How do we possibly do it for so much less?

Cable companies do not manufacture the wire we use.
Working metals of any kind requires massive furnaces and multi-million dollar equipment, the operation of which is heavily regulated by the governments of the host country. Most small cable companies avoid the huge orders required by these manufacturers by obtaining finished wire from an established company that already makes cables. These small companies simply re-label this wire with their own name. That's why so many different cables appear so similar...They are! That's also why it is so hard to find something that is better than the average. That is not how we do it.

We do what the biggest companies do.
We order our wire from specific metal manufacturers and have it made for our specifications. There are only a few manufacturers in the world that can make the ultra pure wire we demand and we have worked with them all. We push for better prices than they normally give their clients. How do we get away with it?

We buy lots of wire at a time (10,000 feet at a time is a small order for us). We focus our efforts an one great wire design that we can use in multiple cables; rather than the good, better, best approach favored by many. By doing this, we are able to order at least 3 times as much of each type of wire.

By buying so much at once the price we pay for our wire is way less that what the other guys are paying. This savings is passed directly to you.

We don't spend the big bucks on advertising!
Like I said before, we don't do those big full-page magazine ads. It takes all the value away from the cables when you have to pay millions in advertising each year. We put our efforts into making great cables and we pass the savings right to you. Take the lower prices we pay for our huge orders of raw wire, add the fact that we don't do fancy magazine advertising, plus we sell only factory direct, plus we use low cost packaging, plus we give you more for your money and you can quickly see just how easy it is for us to make cables that are as good anything you can buy at 4, 5, or even 6 times more than the price we ask. That's Guerrilla Style!

What does all this mean for you?

The average company is going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not millions) for a big, and expensive, marketing campaign for a very handsome product, which comes in a great looking box. This box has been shipped several times before you get it. With this approach, you are paying at least 300% more than you have to, usually more. What do you get for your money with the regular approach? A good product, but not necessarily a great one. You get monthly advertisements that remind you what a 'good product' you have, some really attractive packaging. And next month a mysteriously 'new and improved' version comes out, which more times than not is just a repackaged version of the one that sold 6 months ago.

If you get anything from me at all, get this...
Don't fall into the belief that cables get better monthly. With those big full page ads, it is easy to believe that everybody has a technological breakthrough on a monthly basis. We have been moving electricity through wire for more than 100 years. The same problems have been around this entire time. And they have successfully been dealt and overcome already. If you look back through history most of the designs used today have been through the cycle at least a few times before.

We have done our research.
We have tested. We have listened extensively. We have solicited the opinions of many different audiophiles. Everybody agrees, these cables are worth way more than the price we charge. You don't need to take my word for it, you can read some of our recent Testimonials for yourself.

If you really want to spend $1100 or more for that one interconnect, that's fine with me.
I truly hope you like it and that it gives you the music pleasure you have been searching for. But before you commit to it, I encourage you to try ours first. They cost less. They sound great. Because they are Unconditionally Guaranteed, you have nothing to loose...just the possibility that you can save a ton of cash! Use the money you save to take a vacation or buy more gear!

With Guerrilla Audio you get great cables, no big ads, and no fancy packaging to drive up the price.
Don't get me wrong. We don't cheap out. We really do give you a better product. We know you will be able to hear the difference and and that is why we back up our products with our Unconditional 45-Day Bullet Proof Guarantee. If you don't agree that the cables are worth every single penny you paid, you get your money back. It won't cost you a dime if they don't perform for you. It really is that simple!

Accurate sound reproduction is difficult to achieve.
It's hard to get it right but when you do, wow! It is like the artist is performing just for you. In fact, I would say it is better in some ways than live. You always have the best seat in the house, everything is in proportion and in just the right spot. To have Diana Krall play her piano just for me is a fantastic experience! You can enjoy this experience as much as I do. Using our cables will improve your sound or you get your money back, it's that simple. That's the Guerilla Audio way!

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