Kimber Kable Carbon Interconnect

Carbon Interconnect sits between Summit and Select in the Kimber ladder — the tier where the ladder starts to feel genuinely reference-adjacent, at a price that has kept it in production since its introduction. It shares its lineage with the Carbon loudspeaker cables (Carbon 8, Carbon 16, Carbon 18 XL) and is the natural signal-path partner to them.

Each conductor is a bundle of seven copper strands in four different gauges — Kimber’s VariStrand approach, where the differently-sized strands within one conductor favour different parts of the frequency band. Each conductor sits inside a carbon-infused polymer that acts as an electrostatic screen — the reason the series is called Carbon — and then a Teflon sleeve provides the final dielectric layer. Four 19.5-gauge oxygen-free copper conductors handle each channel, and the two channels are then braided together into a single stereo cable, a construction technique Kimber first used on its Axios headphone cable. Measured, the result is a 45 mΩ per metre loop resistance, 86 pF per metre parallel capacitance, and 0.28 µH per metre series inductance.

The braid runs seamlessly into the connectors — no soldered joint at the plug end. WBT 0114 CU RCA connectors are standard, with WBT 0114 Ag silver-plated RCAs available as an upgrade and XLR available at no extra cost. The cable is hand-built to order in Ogden, Utah, in whatever length is specified.

Carbon is the correct step for a system where the electronics are already resolving enough to expose what an interconnect one tier below is doing wrong, but where the case for Select’s silver-and-copper metallurgy has not yet been made. Its loudspeaker counterparts are the Carbon 8, 16, and 18 XL depending on speaker size and demand, and moving between Carbon and Select is one of the cleaner upgrade decisions in the range. Walk in during business hours or book ahead if the audition needs your specific electronics in the room.