Yeah William it's some sort of silver litz wire. I was sorely tempted to replace it with some solid core neotech and would have except the cheapie RCA's holes were not big enough for some WBT's. Anyways just change one thing at a time is probably a good idea. This thing is a prototype (markings on the back are actually for a DAC enclosure) but the cooking version was ultra expensive when new something like 12K gulp... Thankfully my mate was realistic with what he wanted for it. I looked up the latest models, saw the pricing and nearly crapped myself. Go and check it out.