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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!
128x128toddverrone
toddverrone's avatar
toddverrone OP
840 posts
 
steve - use whatever you like, as long as you don't misrepresent me, which i'm 99.99% sure you won't.. feel free to correct bad grammar ("..they did superb!"  i swear i graduated college!).  i'm fine with audiogon member toddverrone.  though that doesn't protect my anonymity very well.. take a wild guess what my name is. ha!

ICs -
signal wire: OCC solid silver 24awg in cotton. 3' per cable
https://www.vhaudio.com/wire.html
neutral: OCC solid copper 20awg magnet wire.  2 x 9' per cable
http://www.ebay.com/itm/112418636937?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
connectors: KLE pure harmony solid silver
https://www.vhaudio.com/harmony-rca.html
the white tube is a foamed teflon flexible tube that i ran the signal through. it's pretty amazing.  it doesn't kink at all.  it's called hyperflex tubing from vh audio
https://www.vhaudio.com/wire.html

this has been great fun, i'm very happy with both my ICs and SCs.  thanks so much for rolling up your sleeves and getting dirty with me!  your helix design is quite the accomplishment.  thank you for sharing your knowledge.
twoch
429 posts
 
Ive been through evey thing from
Weilding wire  to the Lowe's thay said was a big hit to. Cat.  All that
Money down the drain.  Buy the
Best wire you can afford. With
Same interconnects.  Listen to the difference
williewonka
3,082 posts
 
Todd - thanks for the info on the IC's.

If you should get currrrrious - I would recommend putting the Absolute Harmony on your IC's

Once the new Bad-Ass Bi-Wire's  are fully burned in and your ears get acclimated to the wonderful clean, dynamically crisp sounds you won't have any trouble hearing the improvements those RCA's will make :-)

Agreed - It's been a great experience - thanks for all the feedback

Until next time - Cheers
toddverrone's avatar
toddverrone OP
840 posts
 
@twoch - I’ve finally come to that realisation within the last 8 months or so. I don’t look at the cat 5 or THHN experiments as a waste of money though. I learned a lot building those cables with materials I could afford to screw up with.
Also, I began the cable journey as a curious sceptic; there was no way I was going to buy solid silver wire for $10/ft. After all my experiments, I’m no longer a sceptic, but there’s no way I’d be here if I didn’t get to mess around with the cheaper materials. Now I’m constantly looking for high performance to price materials and, thankfully, there are many good, inexpensive suppliers with quality materials.

I can’t wait until I get to build a DIY graphene cable of some sort..!

@williewonka I was torn between the pure and absolute Harmony when purchasing RCAs.. one day I may go after the absolute. But then I think I'd be building those solid silver SCs at the same time.. ha!
toddverrone's avatar
toddverrone OP
840 posts
 
Update: the brittle sound has arrived. There’s still loads of clarity and bass, but just a bit over the edge with sibilance. I’m guessing I never noticed this during burn in before because I’ve never previously integrated any silver in my speaker cables. The new helix ICs are burning in as well, and I’ve also never installed new ICs and SCs at the same time. Double burn in! Sorry I can't comment on hours of burn in. Keeping track of that would make this not fun. I'm guessing I'm at 20-30 hrs..

Still, plenty pleasant to listen to and only a slight edge that I’m expecting to disappear.. right before I leave to Europe for a month. Ha!
😝
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