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Topic: Speaker Cable Recommendations |
Jim Cooley
From:
The 'Ville, Texas, USA
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Posted 27 Apr 2012 6:09 am |
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I have been mounting different speakers in amps as part of my "tone quest", and for general comparison. In the near future, I will be mounting speakers in extension cabinets. I need one or two good quality speakers cables with standard 1/4" jacks. Does anyone have any recommendations for types/brands/sources? Does anybody have one or two spare speaker cables for sale?
If I want to temporarily connect an amp's existing speaker wires directly to a speaker in a separate cabinet, is it ok to run regular insulated electrical wire from the amp to the speaker in the other cabinet, or should I use speaker wire? If I can use any wire, is there a recommended gauge?
Thanks.
_________________
Hey, mister, how do you pedal that thing anyway?
"The worst an honest man can do is make an honest mistake" - Augustus McCrae
"From the sweet grass to the packing house, birth 'til death, we travel between the eternities" - Prentiss Ritter
Too many steels, amps & other stuff, and an open mind. I have tube amp bias. |
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Georg Sørtun
From:
Mandal, Agder, Norway
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Posted 27 Apr 2012 6:44 am
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I use regular insulated electrical wire for more permanent set-ups ... not sure about Am gauges (apart from that they still don't make sense to a Norwegian electrician  ) but if a wire has the size to handle more than 15 Amps continuously it should be good in lengths up to 10 feet for 99.9% of all amps/speakers ever made.
For speaker cables it is not about handling high effects continuously, but rather to have as direct and rigid a coupling between amp and speaker as possible so it doesn't "color" or soften peaks.
I also frequently use "car starter" cables as speaker cables, with 2-3 inch long ends of smaller size to fit in the actual connectors/jacks. "Car starter" cables are overkill as speaker cables (unless you need 30 feet or more between amp and speaker), but they're flexible, and don't cost much compared to those over-priced and under-sized cables that are sold as "super/monster speaker cables".
In lengths above ca 6 feet you can hear the difference between "car starter" cables and the best and most costly "super/monster speaker cables", with the "car starter" cables as speaker cables as the winner in any set-up every time. |
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Dave Grafe
From:
Hudson River Valley NY
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Posted 27 Apr 2012 6:38 pm
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| Any well-insulated two-conductor UNSHIELDED wire will do, i.e. no shielded guitar cords, they can damage your amp while trashing your tone. You want AT LEAST 14AWG conductors, 12AWG is better. Smaller than 14AWG is just lost power and tone vanished in transit. |
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Jim Cooley
From:
The 'Ville, Texas, USA
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Posted 29 Apr 2012 5:21 am
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Thanks, Georg and Dave.
It sounds like I can go to the hardware store and buy the insulated wire. That will be convenient. They sell it off the roll. Any suggestions for pre-manufactured cables with 1/4" ends? Can I solder 1/4" males onto the electrical wire so that I can plug into the speaker cabinet jacks? If so, how is that done? |
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Jerry Overstreet
From:
Louisville Ky
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Posted 29 Apr 2012 6:05 am
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Check the online or your local music stores for speaker cables. Speaker cables have 2 runs of equal diameter wire. Don't use guitar cables.
Musicians Friend, Sweetwater, Guitar Center, Parts Express [my favorite] carry speaker cables at a reasonable price. ProCo, Hosa, Horizon etc. Might be cheaper on you than building your own time you buy cable and plugs.
Obviously 12 or 14 ga. is better, but for short runs of 10-12' you can go as small as 16 ga. no problem. They're cheaper too. I used 2 sets of 10' 16 ga. cables in a stereo steel guitar rig for 10 years 'til I ran across a deal on some 12 ga. ones.
Yes, you can buy 1/4" plugs and solder onto your wiring. The best ones are Switchcraft. You just have to maintain polarity. IOW, wire the same run to the tip of both plugs and the other to the ground lug or sleeve. They are usually different colors, or you can use a ohm/continuity meter to keep true.
Last edited by Jerry Overstreet on 29 Apr 2012 6:46 am; edited 2 times in total |
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Chas. J. Wagner
From:
Denver, Colorado USA
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Posted 29 Apr 2012 6:11 am
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| Jim Cooley wrote: |
| Can I solder 1/2" males onto the electrical wire so that I can plug into the speaker cabinet jacks? If so, how is that done? |
Yes you can...but I assume you mean 1/4" jacks. Just get two good quality jacks like Switchcraft...
These are readily available...here's one source...
http://www.amazon.com/Switchcraft-280-Straight-Phone-Plug/dp/B0002GZ7VO
Your electrical cord will have two conductors. On the outside jacket, one side will have ribs. The other side will be smooth. Cut your cable to length. Insert the metal jack cover over one end of the cable (threads pointing to the end of the cable). Insert the plastic insulator tube over the end of the cable. Strip each conductor to bare wire (make the ribbed side conductor short). Solder the end of the ribbed side conductor to the small tang on the 1/4" jack. Fold back the smooth side bare wire against the jacket and clamp down the long tang around the jacket and bare wire (you can also solder the bare wire to the long tang to ensure a good connection). Pull the plastic tube insulator over the connections. Screw on the metal cover.
Repeat on the other end of the cable.
I think I made this too complicated...it's really very easy.
Last edited by Chas. J. Wagner on 2 May 2012 7:46 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Jerry Overstreet
From:
Louisville Ky
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Posted 29 Apr 2012 6:20 am
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| Whoops, didn't mean to dupe Chas' post. I was doing an edit and didn't see it. |
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Dave Grafe
From:
Hudson River Valley NY
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Posted 29 Apr 2012 7:33 am
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| Quote: |
| but for short runs of 10-12' you can go as small as 16 ga. no problem |
Technicaly this is true (depending on your definition of "problem"), but the smaller wire has considerably higher resistance and even a short run of skinny cable will impair the damping action of the amp, i.e. its ability to control the reactive excursion of the speaker at high volume levels. This is most noticeable in the low end, not as louder or softer but as tighter or sloppier.
When I was building high-power amps some years ago we found that even a few inches of small-ish wire in the output circuit INSIDE THE AMP ITSELF reduced the damping factor drastically. For a solid, tight low end use the heaviest gauge wire you can safely get into the 1/4" jacks, usually this is 12AWG. |
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Jim Cooley
From:
The 'Ville, Texas, USA
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Posted 29 Apr 2012 8:11 am
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| Well, duh on me. I'm going to make my own cables. I've done this kind of stuff several times. It will be fun and a lot more cheaper than buying them, plus I'll get exactly what I want. I ordered some Switchcraft jacks. All I have to do now is get the wire and I'm ready. Thanks again. |
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Ken Morgan
From:
Midland, Texas, USA
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Posted 29 Apr 2012 10:18 am
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I think I've mentioned this before here; some of the very best recording and mastering engineers in the business use regular ol zip cord (heavy lamp cord) as the speaker wire in their $100,000 rigs...and do NOT be fooled by the hype! A blind test was done with a lot of the same people A/B testing the most expensive Monster cable ($40/ft) vs regular COAT HANGERS(!!!) and the coat hangers won.
Just make sure you solder connections good, use Switchcraft or Neutrik plugs, and yer good to go
_________________
67 Shobud Blue Darling III, scads of pedals and such, more 6 strings than I got room for
Ken Morgan
Midland, TX |
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Steve Lipsey
From:
Portland, Oregon, USA
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Posted 29 Apr 2012 10:21 am
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So why is the speaker wire inside the chassis and in speaker enclosures between the speaker and the jack, such small gauge? Just because it is short?
_________________
https://www.lostsailorspdx.com
Williams S10s, Milkman Pedal Steel Mini & "The Amp"
Ben Bonham Resos, 1954 Oahu Diana, 1936 Oahu Parlor |
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Dave Grafe
From:
Hudson River Valley NY
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Posted 29 Apr 2012 10:57 am
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| Quote: |
| the most expensive Monster cable ($40/ft) vs regular COAT HANGERS(!!!) and the coat hangers won |
The only thing significantly better about "Monster" cable is that they are heavier gauge than most competition, and coat hangers, being solid wire rather than made up of many fine stranded conductors, do have less resistance, so these results make good sense.
| Quote: |
| So why is the speaker wire inside the chassis and in speaker enclosures between the speaker and the jack, such small gauge? Just because it is short? |
Mostly because it is a lot cheaper, Steve, and maybe a bit easier to work with on the production floor. Because the runs are so short the resistive power loss is generally negligible, but the output impedance goes up significantly.
With music gear in general and guitar amplifiers in particular nobody seems to worry about the damping factor (if they even know what it is!), which is the ratio of speaker load impedance to amplifier output impedance, and is an indication of the amp's ability to control the speaker cone with precision, i.e. to "damp" the tendency of the cone to bounce around in reaction to a strong impulse. Some guitar amp designers intentionally keep the damping factor low, allowing the non-linear characteristics of the speaker itself (Celestion fans know about this) to help create a distinctive "sound" - and at 35 watts it's not such a big deal, but at 350 watts it is.... |
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Jim Cooley
From:
The 'Ville, Texas, USA
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Georg Sørtun
From:
Mandal, Agder, Norway
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Posted 29 Apr 2012 1:03 pm
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After having checked and compared my European "mm2" wire measurements with AWG, I can at least tell you what I use for speaker cables, and why.
Up to 3 feet: multi-stranded wire at around 11 AWG (or thicker), each strand being thinner than 26 AWG.
Up to 10 feet: multi-stranded wire at around 7 AWG (or thicker), each strand being thinner than 26 AWG.
Longer than 10 feet: multi-stranded wire at around 3 AWG (or thicker), each strand being as thin as possible - at least thinner than 26 AWG.
I use multistranded wires to keep the "skin effect" (the skin effect causes the effective resistance of the conductor to increase with the frequency of the current) out of the equation. DC resistance doesn't tell much when processing audio, and I never use solid - single strand - wires for speaker cables.
Then I simply go for as thick wires as I can practically use / fit in, to keep resistance low and dampening factor high. My simple "rule of thumb" is to try to use speaker wires of at least 10 times the "recommended" area (mm2).
In really critical audio set-ups I make sure the two speaker wires do not run close and perfectly parallel to each other - overall there should be at least half an inch between them, and "nice installations" with perfectly parallel wires makes the wires "interact" along their length - in effect the wires form a capacitor.
That's one reason I don't use "monster" cables for anything but to occasionally replace thin speaker wires inside amp and speaker cabs with, and then I often split them apart for most of their length.
Very short lengths of "monster" cables are also fine to "taper" the end of speaker wires of proper thickness to make them fit into existing connectors.
Those using tube amps with output trafo can relax a bit on speaker wire thicknesses, as the amp/trafo's dampening factor isn't extremely high anyway. Should be multi-stranded and as thick as possible though.
More to gain by using thicker speaker wires when running good SS amps of various designs (class A, A/B, D), as they get better control of the speaker(s) the better speaker cable you use. |
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Mike Schwartzman
From:
Maryland, USA
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Posted 29 Apr 2012 2:17 pm
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If you are going to make your own with the heavier gauges of wire (12AWG or 14AWG)as I do...some cable brands use insulation and outer coverings that makes it very difficult to fit the housing of the plug over the cable. In this case remember that you can buy 1/4 inch "Jumbo Plugs".
It's electrically the same as any 1/4 inch plug, but with a larger housing to accomodate the wider diameter cables.
_________________
Emmons Push Pull, BMI, Session 400, Home of the Slimcaster Tele. |
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Scott Appleton
From:
Ashland, Oregon
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Posted 29 Apr 2012 4:13 pm speaker cable
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It is odd that smaller wire is used internally on combo amps but if you look at the type of stranded wire they are using it usually has a higher ampacity with many more strands than standard electrical wire. the AWG may not tell you its capacity. for example the wire used in
electric ranges is smaller in diameter but handles large currents because its multistrand composition has a higher count of individual conductors or strands. that stuff has a special heat resistant jacket as well.
so more strands more capacity, less resistance. |
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Georg Sørtun
From:
Mandal, Agder, Norway
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Posted 29 Apr 2012 5:12 pm
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For mains (50/60Hz) a solid and a multi-strand wire of same total thickness carry the exact same current, so the main reason to make thicker mains wires multi-strand is to give them some flexibility so they can be bended into place with some ease.
For speaker wires each strand should not be thicker than about 20 AWG if it is to have frequency-linear resistance over any length, so multi-strand wires must be used. |
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Donny Hinson
From:
Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.
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Posted 29 Apr 2012 5:14 pm
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I really think 12ga is serious overkill for most uses. It's heavy, expensive, and generally hard to handle. Actually, the guage used depends heavily on the speaker impedance. If you can live with a 10% loss (and most of us easily can, considering we only use a fraction of our amps real power), 16 ga is good for 40-50 ft. @ 4 ohms. But at 8 ohms, we can use well over 50 ft of 18 ga for the same 10% loss.
If I were running a bass guitar and a 500 watt amp, I might be tempted to use 12ga or 14ga for a long run (100' or more), but for MOR steel stuff and runs of 50' or less, you're just wasting money, IMHO. |
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Jim Cooley
From:
The 'Ville, Texas, USA
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Ray Thomas
From:
Goldsboro North Carolina
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Posted 2 May 2012 7:09 am Speakeer Wire
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| Based on what I am reading, is George L cable a no no for speaker wire???? |
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Kevin Mincke
From:
Farmington, MN (Twin Cities-South Metro) USA
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Posted 2 May 2012 7:23 am
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| Ray, you are correct. There is a differnece in instrument vs speaker cable. GeorgeL NOT for speakers. Speaker wire will have two seperate wires with shielding on them and usually a heavier gauge while instrument cable will have the one very thin wire with shielding (18/20 ga) with a braided as ground. |
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Chas. J. Wagner
From:
Denver, Colorado USA
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Posted 2 May 2012 7:43 am
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However...you can get George L Speaker Cable...
http://georgelsstore.com/custom.html
(scroll down a bit).
They don't specify what the guage is on the web site. I'm sure it is good quality. As with all their cables, it's comparatively expensive. They also offer Solderless Speaker Plugs farther down the page. |
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Dave Grafe
From:
Hudson River Valley NY
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Posted 2 May 2012 9:07 am
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Regardless of the wire gauge, DO NOT USE SHIELDED CONDUCTORS FOR SPEAKER LINES unless you want to end up with a fried amp. Just don't....  |
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Chas. J. Wagner
From:
Denver, Colorado USA
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Posted 2 May 2012 10:33 am
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Here's a brief article from Fender on the difference between Speaker Cable and Instrument Cable and why they are NOT interchangeable...
http://www.fender.com/news/index.php?display_article=458
There are pics of each cable.
The speaker cable pic shows twisted pair. I was under the impression that twisted pair provided the best performance because the twist would cancel out external interferences (such as radio frequencies). |
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