Salty,
Time to sell your soul, brother, a guy just listed a BAT VK-20 on Head-Fi for $1200. Retail (w/ remote and phono pre) was just shy of $3000. Heck, maybe he'd meet you halfway and go $1100?
FS: BAT GEAR Pre and CDP - Head-Fi: Covering Headphones, Earphones and Portable Audio
Can't hurt to try but don't be surprised if it falls on deaf ears. You might also try emailing Alex at A Pure Sound since he's recabled a couple pairs. He might remember what the stock cable is like.
I prefer the pre-air friend, the one cast for the show is pretty damn annoying.
Sometimes a recast can be a good thing, i.e. the girlfriend on Reaper (which was a huge upgrade in my book).
Regarding the stock cable, you need to find out if it's 3 or 4 conductor. Since the headphones are single-entry it could be either. Unfortunately there's no way of doing that without taking something apart so at a minimum you'll need to open up the headphones and see what's coming in from the cable side of things.
See if you can find someone that is associated with Westone, they seem to have a pretty big network. The guy I found locally had their brochures in his office which surprised me quite a bit.
Thankfully I found a local Audiologist who did the impressions for $20. I can see how cross-border mods would suck, thankfully that wasn't something I had to worry about. The pre-sale customer service from Livewires has also been excellent with questions answered politely and quickly.
I did some more thinking about this purchase and I'm going to go with the Livewires and see how they do. It's hard to beat their 30 day return policy with customs.
And I looked into the Westone's a bit more, they look nice, but are even more $$ which doesn't appeal to me at this point.
I enjoyed the first, tired quickly and didn't make it all the way through the second. I might give it another shot at some point but that's highly debatable.