Home Depot speaker cable, which one to buy

Let us know if they sound any different Shadorne.

Just to set the record straight, as I said in my cable survey of a few years back in TAS, the model number and moniker of the Home Depot cable are entirely of my own devising: I was trying to be clever and inject a bit of wit into the proceedings. Yet many readers went to Home Depot asking for the cable by model number and of course the salespersons had no idea what they were asking for. The cable itself is strictly generic outdoor heavy duty--14 gauge in this case--extension cable in the orange/black color (so that it can be readily seen and thus not accidentally cut by electronic hedge shears and the like). Home Depot also sells a 12-gauge in a different color (yellow, I think). I wish I could say this discovery was my own, but I got the idea from the esteemed recording engineer Tony Faulkner, who once in a pinch used its equivalent in the UK to hook up an amplifer to his Quad 989s and found the results excellent, and Alan Shaw, the current owner and designer of all those great Harbeth speakers, also recommends something like this. Don't necessarily think you have to buy the exact cable I did, and you don't for that matter have to be stuck with the Halloween colors if you don't like them. A friend of mine went to an electrical supply house and bought the same cable in black (by this I mean not necessarily the identical cable but a three-conductor, 14-gauge extension cable, and I think I've also seen it in beige). For what it may be worth, I think I've gotten more feedback from this than any other single piece I've written for TAS, and some readers have been endlessly inventive, using, for example, two cables twisted together per channel. Whatever, it is seriously good, and gives the lie to the assertion that you have spend thousands per foot or meter to get a good cable. The reality is that the "sound" of a cable is in large part of a function of the interaction between the output characteristics of your amplifier and the impedance of your speaker system. If a cable changes the sound of your system dramatically, my colleague Robert Greene often says that's a sign you may need a better speaker (or possibly a different amplifier--though most modern competently designed solid-state units won't be much affected). It may also be a sign that the cable is behaving weirdly, as a few did way back in the eighties when audiophile speaker cables were gaining popularity. One model in particular made made some amplifiers oscillate (though, again, this is unlikely to happen with any competently designed present-day amplifier).

thanks Paul for taking the time to post!

It seems you could go out and buy some 12 or 14 gauge wire anywhere and get good results but I will go to Home Depot and see what they have.

As one person mentioned the DIY White Lightning recipe works well. Basically patio extension cord from Wal-Mart:

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/whitelightning/moonshine.html

Also, these are on my radar to try: http://www.tempoelectric.com/cables.htm

I bought the Woods Yard Master Patio Cord to make the White Lightning but have a question.

Is it important that the wire is used in the manner explained? In other words, I would like to use two leads of one cable to run to the positives of one speaker and two leads on another cable to run the negative leads (bi wire config) instead of green and white together for positive and black alone for ground.

I presume this would mess up the capacitance and resistance of the official White Lightning formula but thought it would be worth asking as it would make it easier to run the wire.

thanks again guys!

Phil