Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Another interesting read on speaker wire

Re:What is "Rona"?
Home building supply store similar to Home Depot. I think that they used to be called Revy Building Centers. I believe that they are a Canadian company?

Skerdi, the 5000UE is fine, especially if you're going to be installing it behind the walls; that's what it's rated for. The outer jacket is there to reduce the amount of HCL gas and acid given off by the PVC covering on the wire in case of fire. If you're not going behind the walls, using the regular 16ga lampcord without the outer jacket is fine.

Unless the type of banana plugs you get require soldering, no tools are necessary to put the wire in.

Looks nice! Now that you've got the sleeves and heatshrink tubing, you can turn around and sell those on eBay for $100 a foot!

You may want to tin the ends of your conductors with solder (so they don't fray) rather than using banana terminals. I haven't found any solder-free bananas for 12 gauge and solder-style bananas run about $6 a pair.

I misspoke on the wire gauge. The wire is 14 AWG, but I'm using two of those wires per connector, so not sure what that works out to be. With the bananas I used, I had no problem with fitting both wires, twisted together, into the connector and screwing down both of the set screws. I'm guessing these connectors would handle a 10 AWG wire, no problem. They are gold plated and were right around $5/pair from the Blue Jeans guys. They actually feel heavy like metal, compared to the super light plastic feeling ones I've seen elsewhere. I know heft doesn't always mean quality, but in this case it's probably a good thing.

Ken.

It comes out to 11 gauge. I have the same setup on my speakers, although your cables are far, far more attractive than mine.

The example of the speaker wire with clear insuation is the same stuff that Home Depot is currently selling. Anybody have experience using that and having it oxidize and turn green like the picture??

That is what I was planning on using. Good to know I can go smaller diameter. I was planning on using 14 ga, but can use thinner stuff for a 20 ft run to the surrounds

Yep, I had some of that speaker wire. Yep, it turned green. I was cleaning the garage last weekend and found some more that I hadn't thrown away. Yep, it had turned green.

A little commentary on the green wire. First, it isn't oxidation; when copper oxidizes it turns an increasingly dark shade of brown(e.g. an old penny). This results from contact with oxygen in the air; it has nothing to do with the minute amount of oxygen which is added to copper wire during the production process to improve its physical properties, and hype about "oxygen free" wire is meaningless. For example, when I cut some additional lampcord(which I'd bought 17 years ago)recently in connection with changes because of adding the EP500, the copper which had been covered by the jacket was still bright and had no oxidation.

The green color is the result of copper combining with chlorine apparently released from an inadequately stable batch of polyvinyl chloride(PVC)in the jacket. Although it looks unsightly(unless your favorite color is green, maybe), it doesn't affect transmission if the surface in actual contact with the terminals is cleaned.