Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Bare Wire for Axiom speakers? Blue Jean Cable?

Hey guys. Slowly choosing each component of my HT.

What do you guys use to terminate your speaker wire on each end and could you just use bare wire on Axioms?

I have heard Blue Jean cable is really good and affordable and was wondering If anyone has used the speaker wire they sell.

Thanks again.

Bare wire - Axiom's 12 guage.

Home Depot stuff works fine. 14 guage will work for most short runs.

bare.....12 gauge spool from Ebay.

I used bare wire for 7 years. I recently bought some blue-jeans banana plugs to terminate the ends. Why? I'll be moving the gear around a few times in the next couple of years and wanted the convenience of banana plugs.

Just luck up on ebay or is someone selling it on a regular fashion? I could use an extra spool of the "good" stuff.

Hi Rat, when I was looking, I just searched for 12 gauge wire on ebay and found some place that sold in 500' spools for around $20-25. It is very nice, oxygen free, speaker wire, with a red stripe on one side that makes it nice to maintain polarity. Since my 4 surrounds are 20 - 30' away from the AV closet, I needed some longer runs. This was all done before I drywalled and textured...

At least for the fronts, I would suggest some 10G speaker wire, and, I know that some may not agree, see if you can purchase a customized bi-wire cable. I got mine from SignalCable.com. You can also check CobaltCable.com, and of course, Blue Jeans Cable.

Zach, speaker wire performs the necessary, but technologically trivial, job of serving as a piece of metal to guide the electromagnetic wave between the amp and speaker. Any wire having reasonably low electrical resistance and inductance over the distance involved is "real good". This is an area of audio infested by charlatans selling wire at outrageous prices and making claims that are without a factual basis. Blue Jeans is a reputable company and not outrageously priced, but as some of the other replies have indicated, you can spend considerably less. If you haven't studied this article and table on speaker wire by a well-respected veteran audio professional, it would be worthwhile to do so.

blue jeans is great. I've bought raw bare speaker wire from them as well as most of my interconnects. For the quality cables they sell, their prices can't be beat.

Sir: thanks! I'll do a search on ebay and see what I can find.

I thought that I had some wire left from the spool that I bought 7 years ago. But, alas, I could not find it. Maybe I used it all or maybe one of the kids "borrowed" it. LOL!

Thanks again for the information.

I went to BlueJeans for my cabling needs - but found that even their prices were twice or three times what I could get on eBay, at Rat shack or on Home Depot.

There really ain't nothin' special about the cable that you need, especially if your runs are fairly short (under 50 feet). I use 12 and 14 guage speaker wire throughour my system, which replaced the 18 guage wire which I was using for a time until the thicker guage stuff got delivered on eBay. Funny thing - when it arrived, it felt nicer, was definitely thicker, but sounded IDENTICAL to the dirt cheap 18 guage speaker wire.

If you must buy your cable pre-terminated or you feel that your system won't be complete unless you've spent some money on it etc., then go to Blue Jeans, or any other online retailer - but know that for the short runs that most of us are dealing with, there simply won't be any audible difference in the sound.

I found some 12 gauge, oxygen free, speaker wire on ebay. I placed a couple of bids and the bid just kept going up. I don't know if the seller was playing games or someone had a much higher bid. I'll keep watching and bidding on other speaker wire.

let me just say as far as working with the axiom wire "its like butter" very plyable and easy to work with. i used it for my whole room.
Jake

Fine wire threads in the Axiom 12. Hard to keep from cutting some of them. Nice lay flat wire.