2. tech-talk
  3. 972839956

Simple Question. Simple Answer?

Istead of using jumper cables on my bi-wireable speakers I stripped 3" on the ends of my Kimber cables and ran them through the LF post and on up to the HF post. I took the flat connector plate off. Did I do the right thing using one unbroken wire to complete both circuts? Would making a seperate jumper from the same wire sound better, worse or the same? I could try it of course but this would require stripping an additional 32 individual wires. I did it with a medium sharp box cutter before because both of my strippers had a tendancy to damage some of the individual strands, it took a long time and that was for only 16 wires. I have read previous posts on the subject but they do not address the one wire method that I used. I would also be up to trying a seperate silver wire jumper if I could make it myself on the cheap. Could I use a solid core silver wire for this in one run with no insulation or connecters? If so what gage would I want to use? My mono amps for bi-amping did not come in on a shipment as expected so I would like to experiment with this in the meantime. This is why I would rather put more thought than money into the project other than the fact that I am cheap. Thanks.
128x128dekay
carl_eber
1,425 posts
 
My vote for this method, if you must use it, is to use separate silver wire as the jumper, simply because when the silver on the surface of the conductor oxidizes over time, it will still conduct electricity (Jeffrey Smith of Silversmith cables feels this even sounds "better" than non-oxidized silver...though I've heard no evidence of the affirmative of this, for it to be true for me). Using the same unbroken copper conductor is great on truely ideal terms. But, copper oxide does NOT conduct electricity............................The best method for single wire connection, is to NOT have two sets of (bi-wire) posts in the first place. A terminated bi-wire cable is the simplest, quickest, and best solution for a bi-wire connection, IMO (and is also the consensus of most of the print reviewers in the past few years).
dekay's avatar
dekay OP
5,552 posts
 
Thanks Carl: I use Deoxit on the bare wire connections though I did not notice any improvement when I cleaned them last week. I do not want to buy internal bi-wires because with a little luck I will be bi-amping pretty soon and they would then not be needed. Any idea if the single run of bare solid core silver wire would work well as a jumper? If so can you recommend a gage for the wire. My amp is rated at 50 watts rms but tests at around 80 watts. Thanks.
carl_eber
1,425 posts
 
I use a small length of Audioquest 22 gauge silver wire to bypass the tweeter fuses on my Maggies. It should probably be a little bigger wire than that, but this has worked fine for me. I don't believe there is a solid core silver wire that is any larger, so anything else will be more than one strand (Kimber's is like 19 AWG, but there are 3 strands). If you are going to bi-amp, then you just need a whole other set of single wire speaker cables to run from the amp anyhow, don't you? Just get another set of speaker cables, maybe?
carl_eber
1,425 posts
 
I meant to say that in the mean time, you could just double-up the spade connectors (of two sets of single wire speaker cables) on the amp end, and connect to the bi-wire terminals on the speaker end. I have an HT Pro-9 biwire cable, that I double-up the spades on the single-wire SPEAKER end; this works fine. Just make sure that none of them try to reach across and touch the opposite pole, or there'll be hell to pay from your amp's point of view!!
More to discover