Boy, I can stir some stuff up! I'm not a metallurgist (surprise), but I think copper is brownish. One side of this stuff is silver - and I'm quite sure it aint real silver. I thought that was tin, or some other much cheaper metal of the silver-ish family. Aluminum seems possible, but I would think the stiffness of aluminum would cause cracking (again, not a metallurgist but I have welded aluminum, and I slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night, and aluminum is pretty stiff, including the wire). Perhaps lead with a tin veneer to make it shiny? Either way, if it is copper, it is a strange color all the way through – tricked me, sorry to offend all those lamp cord fans. If it is not, and the other side is copper (b/c it is brownish), does it matter. I guess not, sounds like just about any conductive piece of metal (or wood, I guess) works without audible degradation by the group's experience. Tonight I was going to try connecting the speakers but running the signal through my 7 year old, but perhaps that is for another thread.
I'll pull the spool out of the trash and see if I can find a metal content to end the mystery. But I've dealt with a lot of copper wire (and aluminum wire) on the industrial side, so I'm pretty sure this stuff is not copper, but I would not want to disagree with those who have much more experience with silver copper wire. I would point out that the HDepot website just says this stuff is “copper and silver colored wire”. Not 99% pure copper as some have surmised. (Confirm for yourself:
http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stor...ctId=100560760)Perhaps all of this is a reason to get ripped off at BB and get some Monster cable - at least I feel confident it is copper (even ifs in a smaller diameter than they try to sell it as). Wow, what a long road this has become.
