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A MONSTEROUS DIY SPEAKER CABLE

I thought I should share you my experience I had with a pair of DIY Speaker Cable project
I have been up to for the past month. Being retired I am always on a tight budget and
try to find ways to stretch this Audiophile on a meager means to still enjoy SET
Sound without breaking the bank.
I use to have an electric lawn mower with this long bright 100 foot orange extension cord
trailing behind me as I mowed. Well I gave that up went to all gas and now the thought occurred
To me : Lets see what I can do making this into a speaker cable. So I cut into it and had one run on each side and the midrange reproduction on these was very musical and nice. So I thought lets shotgun a pair together like the days of the old Mit 750 Shotgun and see what happens. I did and the soundstage started to open up along with top end transparency. Well I kept working on the cables until I finally came to the magic
Number of 5 runs per speaker cable which made the cable almost 2 inches in diameter with 126 stands
Of copper wire on the negative terminal and 260 strands of copper wire on the positive terminal. This extension cord is 16 guage 3 wire for one cable. Well I have 5 together. I wonder if that makes it a 4 or 2 guage LOL. I have the black wire all tied together for the negative terminal and the green and white wire twisted together for the positive terminal. When I finally finished the one problem I encountered was the weight on the terminal ends. ITS HEAVY. I BOUGHT some Radio Shack bananna plugs for 12 guage wire and this did help some. I was able to pull my neg. wires through the plug okay, but the positive wire only partially through. So I will need to get some shrink wrap and finish this up that way.
I also covered the bright hugly orange with black duck tape so as to create less of an eye sore and will be trying to hunt down some teflex big enough to go over these monstrous cables.
Well how do they sound? WOWWOWWOW!!!
I can hear way way back into the soundstage and all and every instrument is heard and played in utter transparency. Even small acoustic instruments can be tracked very easily and I was able to hear talking of the artist after a take as well since some recording engineers did not fade the music out all the way at the end of a take. You can hear the acoustic space of every recording so cleanly and clearly along with the air in the space and the decay of each note is conveyed clear as a bell. Even triangle sounds can be heard nicely.
Talk about an upgrade. IMO this cable in my system sounds like a 2 to 3K pair of speaker cables that I only paid about for $25..00 for the 100 foot extension cord and about $32.00 for 2 sets of bananna plugs.
All instruments sound natural and lifelike with plenty of body. I am just in utter amazment at what I accidently discovered with this cable and I wanted to share it with as many people as possible for everyone
To try this out for themselves and reap the benefits I found on my own.
Now I did not use any special metals, gold, i.e. cryo, or internal lead shot, magnets, or special cottons or silver, or internal water to dampen things out or 20k speaker interface boxes. JUST A 100 FOOT BRIGHT ORANGE EXTENSION CABLE FOR $25.00
Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated
Don C.
128x12876doublebass
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knownothing
1,611 posts
 
Question: 76doublebass used 16 gauge wire in a run of five wires (x3 leads) per speaker. That is a lot of dialectric material. Is there an advantage to having more separate runs with more insulation, or would it be better to have three runs of 14 gauge wire, or two runs of 12 gauge wire, etc., reducing the amount of plastic in the system.

Finally, is there an elegant way to finish the ends of these? Sounds like you will have about 3/8" to 1/2" of wire going into whatever you are using for your termination.
76doublebass's avatar
76doublebass OP
254 posts
 
This is the minor problem I'm having with the end leads.I am using the Monster Cable Bananna Plug on the speaker side
and it is almost not large enough in diameter to accomadate.
I really need to twist very tightly the ends with needle nose plyers to get that end to work. I am using a 12 guage
Bannana Jack from Radio Shack and this seems to give me more room to work with on the terminating side of the amp
end. So I'll probably switch over to this one on the amp side later on.
To my ears on my 1.8 watt 84C ZEN SET Amp this cable just sounds absolutely incredible,But may sound very different on high bandwidth solid state.But I may do some comparisons thru the usedcable.com library to see how they stack up to regular commercial speaker cable.
I was thinking that possibly with my amp being rated at 1 to 8 ohm loads and my speakers having a 2 ohm rating that possibly the heavy gage is optimizing this combination
and interfacing and compimenting it to its fullest advantage.
johnnyb53
3,510 posts
 
76doublebass:
To my ears on my 1.8 watt 84C ZEN SET Amp this cable just sounds absolutely incredible,But may sound very different on high bandwidth solid state.
Given the very low output of this SET amp, SET's typically limited bandwidth, and the higher output impedance you typically get with tube amps, I'd say that lowering the speaker cable impedance to near zero would yield dramatic results. You did notice that the big jump in sound quality came when you added the fourth run of cable.

On a more powerful system where the amp has a very low output impedance, you might hear less difference lowering cable resistance than--say-reducing skin effect or inductance.
76doublebass's avatar
76doublebass OP
254 posts
 
Thanks for the info Johnny. This makes sense to me as well.
I am curious what new commercial speaker cable would hold up to this flea SET Wattage amp. I may get some cables on loan at a later date,But in know rush for now.
I'm really enjoying the sound of the system so much more .
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