Lone Ranger Full-Range: the entry-level speaker cable of the Folk Hero Series
Lone Ranger opens AudioQuest's Folk Hero Series of speaker cables. It adopts ZERO-Tech, which leaves the cable with no characteristic impedance, and carries noticeably more conductor metal than the models that came before it. The stated outcome is a quieter cable with a fuller, more powerful presentation.
Sold as a pair: the pack contains two cables, one for the right channel and one for the left.
Construction and conductors
The positive and negative legs run in two separate round jackets, which makes the cable easier to route despite its generous gauge. The conductors are solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ wires: with no strands there is no strand-to-strand interaction, while the very high purity of the copper lowers grain-boundary distortion and helps noise dissipation.
ZERO-Tech removes the electrostatic field between the send and return conductors: with no characteristic impedance there can be no mismatch with amplifier or loudspeaker, and transient current flows without compression. Spades and bananas are red copper, cold-welded with no solder and silver-plated by immersion; breakouts and plug bodies are synthetic, so that no RF noise is induced in the conductors.
Noise dissipation
Radio-frequency interference from satellites, mobile networks and WiFi is tackled jointly by the Graphene+Carbon mesh, direction-controlled conductors, silver-plated shield drain wires and the 72-volt DBS with RF Noise-Trap, which biases the insulation to cut its noise. Permanent Molecular Optimization treatment lowers transient intermodulation distortion and shortens burn-in.
Terminations, lengths and bi-wiring
Four terminations are offered. The U-Spade and the V-Spade are clamped under the binding-post nut and differ in the shape of the opening; the Multi-Spade is shaped to fit posts of different diameters; the Banana plugs into the central hole of the post for quick connections. Lengths: 2 m, 2.5 m, 3 m and 4 m. Used alone it covers the whole band; with loudspeakers that have two sets of terminals it can serve the treble alongside BigFoot BASS on the low end. It must not be double bi-wired with two ZERO-Tech cables: the amplifier would distort.
Key features
- Series: Folk Hero, entry model
- Conductors: solid, direction-controlled Perfect-Surface Copper+
- Technologies: ZERO-Tech, 72-volt DBS with RF Noise-Trap, PMO
- Shielding: Graphene+Carbon mesh and silver-plated drains
- Terminations: U-Spade, V-Spade, Multi-Spade, Banana
- Lengths: 2 m, 2.5 m, 3 m, 4 m
