Today’s Fresh Catch: Sablon Audio’s Panatela Speaker Cables

Mark Coles of Sablon Audio fame has been busy in his cable laboratory, crafting a truly wonderful new speaker cable design – the Panatela.

If you look at the accompanying photo you’ll see the 5-binding post arrangement my Westminster Royal SE uses. The West’s use a bi-wire arrangement for connecting the Dual Concentric speaker unit (which is a brilliantly integrated high-frequency compression horn driver unit fitted into the same axis as a fifteen-inch direct radiating low frequency driver on one chassis), and a 5th binding post to run a ground speaker cable from the speaker to the amplifier.

If you follow Tannoy’s instructions with a 5-cable arrangement of speaker cables the results are spectacular. I think the West’s sound best when all of the cables – including the ground – are the same, but you could mix & match to tailor the sound if you were adventurous. A garden variety length of wire used on the 5th-post gives garden variety results.

Mark asked me if I’d like to give his new Panatela speaker cables a listen, and boy that sounded like a good plan to me! Mark had only a single-wire cable run to send me at the time, but included a silver ground-cable for the 5th-post, and a set of silver jumpers to connect the concentric compression driver.

I’m listening to the Ben Webster & “Sweets” Edison Wanted to Do One Together 45 RPM Original Recordings Group reissue through the Panatela speaker cables on my Westminster Royal SEs right now as I write this post, and it is stunning. I was immediately impressed with the Panatela speaker cables’ overall musicality and the level of detail recovery – a rare combination indeed.  The Panatela speaker cables remind me a lot of the Panatela interconnects, which is high praise, because the Panatela interconnects pretty much blew me away – they are without a doubt my favorite interconnect.

Mark sent me a message a little while ago saying he has another set of Panatela speaker cables ready to send me so I can hear the effect of a full Panatela speaker cable loom on the Westminster Royal SEs. I can’t wait. The music flowing out of the big Westminster Royal SEs is sounding ridiculously good right now, so I’m chomping at the bit to try the full Panatela loom on the West’s to see what happens.

The plan is to do a full review of the production version of the Panatela speaker cables for Positive Feedback Online, using my Auditorium 23 and Acoustic Revive speaker cable sets as comparators.

Here’s a teaser for those who read all the way to the bottom of the post: Tomorrow a pair of Don Garber’s Fi 300B monoblocks are slated to arrive, so you’ll hear more about those beauties soon. Also, Tannoy has asked me to review their new flagship loudspeaker, the Kingdom Royal (around $60K USD), which I’ve agreed to do pending working out the logistics.