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Another speaker wire possibility at Home Depot???

As an alternative to the "decorative" orange and gray stripe 12 guage wire that has been discussed in several previous threads, I am wondering whether anyone has used another 12 guage wire from Home Depot under the brand name Carol Landscape Lighting Cable. It is low voltage for use with 12-volt outdoor lighting systems, black casing with one conductor ribbed for polarity identification and much more flexible than the orange/gray extension cord wire. I intend to give it a try and will report back to this thread at a later date. Meantime, would welcome any comments and/or any experiences others may have encountered with this cable.
wepratt
sugarbrie
3,854 posts
 
Carol Cable actually manufactures in-wall and pro-audio speaker cable, plus Video/Cable/Satellite Coax cable (RG6, etc), microphone cables, and even power cables down to 6 Ga.

Our friends at Parts Express carries a lot of it, including the 6 Ga. power cable.

http://www.partsexpress.com/mfg/carol/carol.cfm

Carol is a division of General Cable.
www.generalcable.com
joeabrams
132 posts
 
"12 ga. is 12 ga" ??
1. the physical distance between the positive and negative legs will determine the capactive and inductive characterics of the cable.
2. the number of strands will affect high frequency response and group delay.
3. the material used in the dielectric will affect apparent speed of the presentation, and will affect ultasonic high frequency extension. That's why manufacturers of quality audio cable use PE, foamed PE, or teflon instead of (much cheaper)PVC.
And those are just easy-to-talk-about factors ...
stringreen's avatar
stringreen
6,485 posts
 
Some of the best speaker cable is Home Depot's THHN. I don't know what that means, but use a leg for plus and another for minus, and its really good.
jea48
4,512 posts
 
Some of the best speaker cable is Home Depot's THHN. I don't know what that means, but use a leg for plus and another for minus, and its really good.
Thermoplastic, PVC, with a nylon jacket.
porziob
316 posts
 
The capacitive & inductive characteristics of the cable will present NO problems in the lenghts used in the average home systems. The dielectric is of similar negligible import since it's the insulator & not the conductor. Some read too many cable mfgs'. white papers which usually contain little else than unsubstatiated claims. Most of these cos. don't own a single piece of test gear. They merely buy the cables OEM. Cable forums similarly produce a lot of smoke & very little light when discussing these matters.
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