2. cables
  3. 129667-84541

Help me build speaker cables please!

Howdy!
I’m looking for input on some home brewed speaker cables. I’m currently using cables I made from braiding 8 lengths of CAT 5 plenum cable together. They’re terminated in silver plated BFA bananas and set up as a biwire configuration at the speaker end. I love their sound, but think I’m ready to try something made from higher grade metal. I’ve been doing a lot with silver in my system and have loved the change in sound almost every time I’ve gone from Cu to Ag. The only place I like Cu better is in the PCs for my amps. That said, I’m leaning heavily towards making a set of solid silver speaker cables, using .999 silver wire from Rio grande. I’ll insulated them with teflon spaghetti tubing and possibly terminate them with silver plated BFAs.

Where I’d love some input is here: do I do one run of 10awg, or biwire 12awg to the woofers, 14awg to the tweeters and mids? I’m using a dared tube preamp and monoblock Ghent audio class D amps (500w into 4 ohm) which drive floor standing RBH 1266 SE/R speakers. They are 4 ohm and have side firing 12" speakers. They like a lot of juice and sound their best when given what they want, hence my desire for large diameter cables.

Cost wise, it’s only $50 more expensive to biwire. I liked the change in sound when I first biwired, but I also went from blue jeans twisted pair 12 awg to my braided CAT 5, which has a combined 9 awg. So I’m not sure if it was the biwiring or all the other differences that improved the sound.

Also, any other ideas for superb sounding DIY SCs are welcome.

Danke!
toddverrone
williewonka
3,131 posts
 
@toddverrone FYI - I just purchased these bananas - I think they do spades as well.

http://www.audiophileanswers.com/Nerve_Audio_Silver_Ultra_Low_Mass_Banana_Z_plug_Co_p/931-090.htm

Another spade/banana option is Furez - great quality and the do work exceptionally well - but a little more expensive,

I have something similar on the gZero6's and they appear to work very well

I like the fact they are silver plated

Regards - Steve


toddverrone's avatar
toddverrone OP
840 posts
 
Steve - great minds! My current cat 5 speaker cables are terminated with those exact same bananas. I bought some copper crimp sleeves from Lowes to put over the bananas, as I prefer a crimp connection to a solder when dealing with many individually insulated conductors.

I think, though, this time I’ll terminate the speaker end in spades and use the bananas to make jumpers, since biwiring is not an option.
williewonka
3,131 posts
 
@toddverrone - UPDATE...

Todd - I’ve built one of the cables with the conductors that I have identified above and I encountered some minor annoyances...

Construction...
  1. - I used two layers of 1/4 inch shrink tube to protect the 16 gauge mil-spec signal wire and put some added "distance" between it and the neutral
  2. - Being a twisted conductor, the 20ft neutral (i.e. on a 10 ft signal wire) only allowed for one wrap every inch. I guess the 1/4" shrink tube required more neutral than I had anticipated I was looking for 2 winds every inch, but I do not believe it will impact the sound.
  3. - Once I had it tightly twisted around the dowel, I secured it at both ends and then warmed the wire with a hair dryer to make it more malleable and then rolled it with the palm of my hand on a flat surface to tighten the wrap and ensure there was minimal unrolling once the the tape securing the ends was removed - this is something you might not encounter to the same degree using two single conductors for the neutral
  4. I then left it for a couple of hours to settle
  5. I inserted the signal wire into the shrink tube, inserted that assembly into the helix coil and secured the ends of the neutral and signal with some dabs of hot glue and shrink wrap - it stops the neutral from unwrapping and sliding up and down the signal wire
Using the twisted neutral was a lot harder to coil and was much more "springy" than I had anticipated - not something I’d suggest to others - unless it provides significant benefits - but it does look quite striking with an orange and black twisted neutral wrapped around the black shrink tube

I’ll let you know how they sound once I’ve installed the bananas (still in transit) and allowed some burn-in

Chat Later






toddverrone's avatar
toddverrone OP
840 posts
 
Interesting. With all the cables I've built, the most challenging and fun part is figuring out how to finish them so they look good, are sturdy, and the geometry isn't compromised.

I ordered 50' of 12awg silver plated copper in Teflon. I am going to see about still trying to biwire. I have an idea to make the connectors work. But I'm starting with a single run..

Interested to hear about what you hear.. I thought that twisted pair cable looked like it might be a bear to wrap. I bet having to go around its own radius also made that twisted pair use up is length pretty quickly. 
williewonka
3,131 posts
 
@toddverrone  - just finished te second cable.

Second one was easier, but I now have blisters on blisters - and that was using gloves.:-(

Will keep you posted as to the sound

Cheers
More to discover