Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Stripping wire...

so I set up my speakers around my newly aquired 92" screen last night (wooo), and I was using some wire strippers that I am borrowing, I have some 14guage (from HD) and 12guage (from bluejeans). When stripping the 14guage some of the wires get cut from the cable, like 3 or 4 of them, I then switched to stripping the wires with the 12guage set, still, wires were getting cut off. Is this normal? Will it effect the sound quality?

THere is about 3 feet for the surrounds from the reciever to the wall plate, the rest is 12guage.

Thanks,

-Hutz

Absolutely normal (although you'll get better at it, and it'll happen a little less. No, it won't affect sound quality in the slightest, unless you're not careful and one of those little bits shorts between the posts. In the last inch or so, going down in gauge is not going to introduce significant resistance.

Awsome, thats the response I was looking for!! I was prepared to do all the connections with my 12 guage wire (which is SUCH a pain in the arse to connect to banana plugs, 14guage is so much easier).

I did the same thing, and although I knew it wouldn't affect sound quality, it still bothered me enough to snip the end off and start over. I guesss I'm just obsessive about that kind of stuff.

Hutzal, yeah, that happens to me, too, but only when I use wire strippers. For some reason, I'm much better using just a knife to cut the insulation off. It takes just a bit of practice, but I can strip the wire without cutting into any strands.

Like the others said, it's no big deal losing a couple here and there.

the strange thing is that it only happens with the 14guage from HD, when I strip the Belden from Blue Jeans Cable all the strands are still intact.

go figure?

Same here. It may make no difference to the electronics, but it matters to me. Yeah, a wee bit of compulsiveness.

Several years ago, in my heyday of working on car audio, I bought a set of those 'automatic' wire strippers. Very similar to this.. It makes stripping wires a breeze and has been worth every penny.

I have some Belden cable from BJC too, and I know what you mean. Those use very thick strands of copper, and so it's much more difficult to accidentally cut them. If you were using a very highly-stranded wire like the kind Axiom sells, I bet it would be a whole lot easier to accidentally cut a few of those teeny-tiny strands.

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I did the same thing, and although I knew it wouldn't affect sound quality, it still bothered me enough to snip the end off and start over. I guesss I'm just obsessive about that kind of stuff.

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Hutzal, what are you using for banana plugs ? There are a number of good suppliers in the US but I haven't found any good ones up here in Canada yet.

I need to rewire my system some time soon and I really don't want to touch anything until I at least have bananas on the receiver end of the speaker cables.

Yes, we have no bananas today.