[Editorial] Upstream Audio Problems: Piskie Dust Mines Close!

Cornish Piskie Dust Mines Shutdown

UK audiophile cable industry shock

Author: Raif Pollo - TNT UK
Published: 1st April 2024

Upstream audio problems

The last of the Cornish Piskie Dust Mines has closed on April 1st 2024

TNT-audio.com avoids cable controversies. We don't do cables (except DIY) and refuse to be drawn into debates about what material or construction is superior to another. This article must not be read as an endorsement for a particular cable treatment. This article is about a cataclysmic supply industry event that may profoundly affect the UK audiophile cable industry and to a lesser extent EU cable manufacturers and maybe more in the wider world.

TNT-audio.com is also apolitical. We've probably got the Apolitical Blues. We take no position politically and review products from around the globe, without fear of favour. This article is about an unexpected consequence of a political action but no political position should be inferred from it. It is the unexpected audiophile implication of a policy change that is under scrutiny here. The effect on the Cornish Piskie Dust mining industry.

The last of the temporary trade agreements, transitional export arrangements and continuation of prior EU-UK trade conditions come to an end today, April 1^st 2024. For those outside the UK and the EU, there have been changes taking place in trading arrangements caused by a referendum in the UK. In 2016, a referendum on whether Britain should leave the European Union (EU) and the term 'Brexit' was coined as a catch-all name for all the implications. The whole business has been so complicated and involving such intertwining international agreements and policies that the UK diplomatic service has been somewhat overloaded. There have been extensions of existing arrangements to allow time for renegotiation of agreements.

Cornish Piskie Dust Mines Shutdown

The Cornish Piskie Dust industry finally closes the last of its mine shafts on April 1^st 2024. This is the date Cornish Piskie Dust loses EU protected title status. The unique qualities of Cornish Piskie Dust will no longer be identifiable from the myriad other sources of such superconductivity materials and audiophile cable treatments. Curiously the voters of Cornwall voted The UK voted to leave the EU in 2016 and actually left on 31 January 2020, but leaders had until the end of 2020 to work out a trade deal. That deal was enshrined in a 1,246-page document that singularly failed to mention Cornish Piskie Dust. If you do not believe us, the document can be read here and we will retract this article if any readers spot a reference to Cornish Piskie Dust, or its mines in the entire document.

So in 2024, April 1^st witnesses the closure of the last of the Cornish Piskie Dust mines so the UK will have to import Scandinavian Pixie Dust or Irish Leprechaun Rainbow Crock treated metals for future UK audio cable production. Cable manufacturers in the EU and to a lesser extent, the rest of the world will also be affected. Premium cables usually specify Cornish Piskie Dust without advertising this secret advantage over rivals.

Cornish Piskie Dust: the trade's dirty secret

An essential trade secret of many audio cables and connectors manufactured in the UK and EU is a mineral mined in Cornwall. The mineral is thought to be created by the compression over many centuries, of tiny quantities of Cornish Piskie dust that fell to the ground millennia ago. Like the sea bed creatures that create limestone beds, marble and the recognisable little fossils therein, the slight coating of Piskie Dust becomes compressed with the surrounding minerals to produce Piskie Dust ore. This is a more reliable source of Piskie Dust than direct from Cornish Piskies because these creatures are on the point of extinction and notoriously mischievous. Cornish Piskies are more likely to sell you the contents of their vacuum cleaner bags than allow this precious Piskie Dust to leave Kernow.

This little known by-product of the Cornish tin mining industry was discovered by pioneering Cornish engineer Augustus Aprillius Neverthick. As electricity became a thing in engineering, Nerverthick noticed that the lights glowed brighter where he was installing them in Cornish tin mines. Looking for an explanation, Neverthick investigated the electrical resistance of various wires. He is the engineer who realised that copper was better wire for lighting than steel. It is he too who discovered that dust coating the bare wires in the Cornish Tin Mines affected their conductivity. Of course, like most engineers, Neverthick first assumed it was a property of the mineral tin in the dust, but further experiments demonstrated that Cornish tin was better than tin from elsewhere.

Audio cables began to be manufactured as an essential audiophile accessory after a series of articles in Japanese and French audio magazines in the late 1970s. Pixie Dust was quickly identified as a valuable ingredient to differentiate really extortionate bits of wire from the merely really expensive. UK manufacturers accidentally discovered the superiority of Cornish Piskie dust compared with the generic variety available on the global commodities markets. Piskie dust from Cornwall is superior in electronic applications because of the high tin content of Cornwall's geology.

The rest of the world have mere Pixie Dust to sprinkle on cables which is less conductive and more prone to oxidation than the premium Cornish Piskie Dust.

European cable manufacturers have benefited from access to Cornish Piskie Dust, without tariffs due to the UK membership of the European Union (EU). Europe's cable manufacturers gained an inherent advantage over those in the far East and the Americas, with their access to this audiophile material little known outside of Western Europe. This was a tremendous boost to the Cornish economy as there are far more cable manufacturers across the wider EU than just in Britain.

In 2016 Cornish voters, along with many other counties in England and Wales voted by a slight majority to withdraw from the European Union. Unfortunately the politicians of Westminster, Strasbourg and Brussels were overwhelmed by the problems of negotiating new fishing quotas and the Northern Ireland - EU border. Even if these politicians and commissioners include some audiophiles, it is highly unlikely that they are aware of the materials needed to construct their favourite interconnects.

Hence, although there is a myth that “Brexit” has been “done”, at no point has the issue of Cornish mineral distribution been considered. Since the vote in 2016 and the Windsor Framework (the most recent agreement in the continuing UK withdrawal saga), overseas orders for refined Piskie Dust have ceased completely. With nothing in the order book to show the banks and shareholders, Piskie Dust miners and refiners have succumbed to a severe cashflow problem. Even when a mine is open and productive, an empty order book equals a bad credit rating.

The Implications for Audiophiles

Either the prices of premium audiophile cables will rise, or manufacturers will hope that inferior strains of Pixie Dust have little effect on their carefully optimised designs. Audiophiles may be in for a shock if buying premium bits of wire to match the others already in their system that were bought before the supply of refined Cornish Piskie Dust dries up. This may disturb the equilibrium of carefully matched systems, especially if they have multiple sources and bi-wired loudspeakers. In future it may be a case of caveat emptor. """"""

Boxout: background for those not familiar with Brexit

When EU membership was voted on in 2016 by the British public, 33.5 million people (72.2% voter turnout) voted in the referendum, such was the controversy stirred up by claims and counter-claims. The final tally was 51.9% in favour of the UK leaving the EU and 48.1% in favour of remaining in the EU. Scotland voted in favour of the UK staying in the EU by 62% to 38%, with all 32 council areas backing Remain. In Cornwall the votes were more strongly in favour of Leave, 56% in favour of leaving the EU and 44% of voters in favour of remaining. Cornwall has always been a Eurosceptic county.

However the consequences of Brexit include a priority shift seen across multiple areas of policy, particularly trade. Britain has been forced to negotiate new policy quickly as fears of Brexit causing harm to the country economically began to arise (Steinberg, 2019). Free trade agreements within the EU make it one of if not the biggest trading powers in the world potentially causing massive problems for the UK so trade policy moved to the top of the priority list (Zimmermann, 2019). The UK adhered to a transitional period until December 2020, then a new deal had to be forged, deals were negotiated in January 2021, known as the Trade and Cooperation Agreement. This provides that the goods meet a certain criteria of rule of origin, which fortunately implicitly included Cornish Piskie Dust. However stricter border policies occurred in its early stages of implementation (Wachowiak and Zuleeg, 2022).

Steinberg, J.B. (2019). Brexit and the macroeconomic impact of trade policy uncertainty.Journal of International Economics, [online] 117(1), pp.175-195. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jinteco.2019.01.009.
Wachowiak, J. and Zuleeg, F. (2022). Brexit and the Trade and Cooperation Agreement: Implications for Internal and External EU Differentiation. The International Spectator, 57(1), pp.142-159. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/03932729.2022.2030604.
Zimmermann, H. (2019). Brexit and the External Trade Policy of the EU. European Review of International Studies, [online] 6(1), pp.27-46. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/26781230.pdf?casa_token=cKRXwRsN-loAAAAA:Vsu4cTplj60ZTtibZYE7giZd4XnVBBpLzWoZ9grEnx2ND2SkYMB0jBmZxY_BEba3HvrqCYuvefQpMniivt0dX44Fb8VUZpmGkRC41wzweCUCk7dwrw [Accessed 25 Feb. 2024].

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