Looking for really fine cables at really low price

The 16 is just proven, tested and recommended. The 14 may be fine, but it is new territory. The 16 is special as used in the above posts! I have it everywhere now. Inside speakers, crossovers, and all electronics.

I do have a friend that tried the solid core and then tried the stranded we are all talking about. He liked the solid core, but preferred the stranded. The stranded 16 is just proven, tested and works across a myriad of different systems.

I see why you are asking about the 14 gauge as it seems he is out of the 16 to purchase by the foot. I understand the stranded 14 is the very same wire and outer wrap.....just thicker gauge. Don't know if it will sound any different.

These are all supposed to be 30 awg tinned copper wires with the aggregate gauge determined by how many wires are bundled together. From what I can find in a quick search, I believe this is C11000, also known as Electrolytic Tough Pitch (ETP) copper wire, which is coated with tin and then a type of thermoplastic insulation/dieletric. The cotton is over the plastic so it is not really part of the dielectric like the cotton on Jupiter Condenser wire, which is directly over the copper wire. I believe the cotton on the WE wire is a covering for durability (and maybe to reduce static build-up?).

Here is a document that may address some of the construction characteristics but requires some speculation as to how the vintage wire was made;AIW Wire Construction Guide

From what I can find, I believe a major supplier of the Western Electric (WE) wire was American Insulated Wire Company (AIW) in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, U.S.A. Here is what the factory looks like today...AIW Factory

The 16 awg wire seems to be the most common size discussed in these posts for audio purposes, at least recently, but I found posts from several years ago where Benjamin Zwickel of Mojo Audio was constructing and selling power cables made with WE wire, and his clients were very impressed when his cords bested incumbents costing many times more. Ben found that the larger gauge wire sounded even better in his power cords, which is interesting but not surprising since virtually every major cable maker goes up in conductor size for their higher-priced speaker cables.

The pair of speaker cables I made use four 16awg wires and four 14awg wires to each speaker with the two sets of four wires twisted together and then cross-connected, which reduces inductance...a good thing in power cables and speaker cables. Therefore, I have the benefit of the 16awg wire (but double the size) going to my MF/HF drivers and the benefit of the much larger pair of 14awg wires going to my LF drivers (for an aggregate of 11awg to the LF of each speaker). In a week or two, I will post what I think of cables made from the 10awg wire since I have some of that on the way. I plan to run four wires per speaker to the LF (for an aggregate 7awg per pole) and only two each to the MF/HF for 10awg per pole.

I like the sound of these speaker cables, but it is different from my other cables that use many individually insulated OCC wires (also in a shotgun, bi-wire configuration) resulting in an aggregate 11 awg going to MF/HF and also to LF. In short, I find the sound of the WE speaker cables to be a little thick (some might say dense), focused on the midrange where they provide a nice tonality, but also good-sounding in the LF or bass, where they have good body but without the bloat some cables allow. In the high frequencies, I find them a touch shelved-down, and maybe even rolled-off, but primarily shelved-down, meaning the HF, while fully present, seems to have lower output compared to the lower frequencies. This sound recalls earlier days when our speakers had large drivers and our systems were musical but not so detailed. I believe that is the attraction...it is nice to be reminded that perfection is not a prerequisite for enjoyment.

Mitch2,
Thanks for the info.

I thought it would be useful to again post Jeff Day's "Listening Bias" as this is pretty much Yazaki-san's bias as well as mine and some "kindred spirits" here on Audiogon. I think this type of "listening" provides a more realistic, or closer to "real sound" as Yazaki-san likes to call it. Not the typical audiophile listening. One man's "thick" is another man's full, weighty, more real and lifelike sound. Definitely not thin like so many audiophile systems which always reminds me of a nasal human voice.

Timbral Listening ala Jeff Day:

Thought it might be handy for those following my writing at Positive Feedback Online to know what my listening biases are to aid you in interpreting and decoding my reviews. Just to alert you, my listening perspective is somewhat of a minority opinion in the Hi-Fi community of North America, but will be more familiar to those listeners in Turkey, Africa, and Japan, who tend to be more familiar with timbral ways of listening. My hierarchy of importance is aligned more closely to how well a Hi-Fi rig plays the musical content of recordings (I know, it’s a heretical concept), rather than how it ‘sounds’ in the more traditional audiophile ‘sonic’ sense.

As a result of my being drawn towards the musical content of recordings, I tend to be a bit more of a timbral listener than is typical for a lot of Westerners, meaning that the reproduction of the textures, colors, and tones & overtones in the music are really important to me. To this end I look for timbral realism at the band level (the band’s signature ‘sound’) and at the individual instrument level (the unique ‘voices’ of instruments). I want them to sound recognizably like themselves in tone and texture, so that their full tone color can develop, which I think helps lend a feeling of beauty and expressiveness to the music. I like the melody (the tune you ‘whistle while you work’), harmony (treble & bass accompaniments to the melody) and rhythm (the steady beat that determines the tempo) to have a life-like flow and connectedness in how the musicians interact—just like in real life. I want dynamics (variations in loudness) to evoke that which I hear in life for an emotional connection to the melody and rhythm. For loudness I like my music playback to be similar to live loudness levels, which for the kind of music I listen to the most, jazz, usually means 80 dB or louder. Finally, I want tempo portrayed so that both the mood and speed of the music are conveyed through it, just like it is with music in real life.

I consider the sonic performance of a Hi-Fi rig on the non-musical artifacts of the recording process to be of value, but of less importance to me than the performance on the musical content of recordings (as above). So things like transparency (being able to ‘see’ into the recording), soundstage (the three dimensions of the recorded space in width, height and depth), soundspace (the acoustic ‘space’ of the soundstage), and imaging (the feeling of solidity and localization of instruments & musicians on the soundstage) are important to me, but they are not my primary focus – the musical content is.

So I like my cake (the musical content of recordings) with a little frosting (the sonic artifacts of the recording process) for a balanced taste treat. Too much frosting and not enough cake puts me off. So that’s me, and you might be different, but at least now you know how.