I will post further listening impressions over the weekend, in the meantime here is the result of the Spatia rewire. The thicker wire is running to a super tweeter, all the others are stripped back to individual conductors. The 4 midrange drivers are wired in pairs. From the positive binding post into one driver positive terminal. Negative out to positive in the other driver and negative back from the second driver to the negative binding post. This maintains the correct impedance. The capacitor protects the ribbon tweeter. There are no crossovers, it is done digitally.

For anyone else considering a speaker rewire (ie Jon), I have a few comments. This may be obvious but I will list my experience nevertheless…. 

a. Please be very careful when stripping the outer sheath so you don’t cut through into the conductor insulation. This is if you decide to slit lengthways and pull the conductors out sideways

As a safer alternative but time consuming, use a blade to cut partway through the insulation at right angles to the length, round the circumference about 75mm from the end. Then slightly bend the cable to ‘break’ this ring away. It can be easily slid along and off the end. Repeat until all done. Slow but no stress to the cable and less risk of the blade nicking the inner insulation. 

b. Don’t pull the inner cable pair hard as you are removing them from the outer sheath - you may stretch and stress the conductors & the insulation.

For anyone else indenting to do this exercise, I would recommend asking/paying GSP to strip back the outer sheath so you purchase just the conductors. Good to give them a little more income too.

c. Follow John C’s example by putting small pieces of blue insulating tape at the signal end of each piece you cut. Once out of the sheath, you will not be able to identify directionality without doing this.

d. It’s best to use a proper cable stripping tool when terminating the ends prior to soldering.

e. The two conductors have an underlined, but very narrow number 1 and number 2 printed regularly along the length to aid channel identification. As they alternate reading from left-right-left-right etc, you cannot use this to determine directionality

The Spatia re-wire has now been in place for almost a week and after further listening, I feel able to give a more objective review. Speakers are still fed by cables from another brand until in a couple of weeks this will also be replaced by Spatia. These only handle midrange & treble, so the re-wire has had no effect on bass performance (Lautus interconnects already on order for the subs):

Treble is now very smooth & sweet whereas before it sometimes had a rather hard bite. I run super-tweeters, previously crossing at 22khz where occasionally there was slight brittleness. I am now able to cross these lower, at 20khz and so far there has been no brittleness whatsoever. Maybe because silver plated speaker wiring has been removed from the signal path. Either way, it is like a very fine adjustment has been made to the top end equalization, benfitting not just FLAC and CD but also vinyl to a lesser extent.

The soundstage has opened up with instruments more clearly placed and 3 dimensional than before. This effect, even with a 2 channel system has been surprising on several recordings, Very fine details such as intakes of breath on closely mic’d vocals now sound very realistic.

As noted previously, vinyl background noise/dust has become indistinct and ‘out of phase’ with the musical signal, now floating free of the musical plane and harder to notice. This is nice.

Overall, a smoother and silkier performance, definitely more musical and natural which is as it should be.  To me the benefits of digital crossovers (very steep slopes, drivers only receiving specific frequencies, proper time and phase alignment, powerful transient response) outweighs the slightly clinical treble which can result on some recordings. Changing this cabling has hade a wholly positive effect.

Noting Graham's comments, I have found this upgrade very worthwhile and a single core version would be perfect for others considering a similar exercise.

I was intrigued by Andrews comments about surface noise when reading this thread.

I have not rewired my speakers, but there is not much wire in them and no crossover.

Listening to a much loved but sadly rather less than well cared for, recording of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff piano concertos.

I am noticing exactly the effect he described of the surface noise being spatially separate from the music, most of the noise seeming to be at the plane of the speakers, more as if someone in the front row were crackling a crisp packet and divorced from the performance of the musicians.

I am using Spatia speaker cables and Lautus I/Cs but I am wondering if some of this is from Grahams attention to phase response in his phono stages too.

Whatever, it certainly makes it easier to enjoy the music and ignore the superfluous noise.