Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions "Hiding" the cable on the wall?

And now for the anti-voice of reason.

You already have wire run through your walls... just re-source a pair of romex from a few plugs, take them out of their AC circuits, replace the outlets in the boxes with wall-mount binding posts. Breaks pretty much every electrical code (and standard reasoning) but it's another solution.

... I wonder if this is how Howard Hughes felt in his final days?

Bren R.

So, you're basically trying to get him to electrocute himself or blow his speaker cones across the room. Makes sense to me...

"Every time I turn the volume up you can see the lights flicker..."

No, no... I said take them OUT of their circuits! As Lo Wang says in 3d Realms game Shadow Warrior... "Hmmm, no powah!"

Bren R.

And if you're not an electrician (or very experienced with it), how are you sure you've done it right? I wouldn't have a clue...

Back to it being the ANTI voice of reason and that it breaks standard reasoning.

I was primarily kidding.

Bren R.

That's what I figured. I was mostly being ornery.

Perhaps I should have stuck to suggesting draping speaker wire around the room and concealing it with a nice Wandering Jew or grapevine...

Bren R.

In reply to Ajax's comments...

I just bought some flat wire from Ramelectronics.net. They sell various guages of flat wire, from 12 to 18 guage. They also sell spray adhesive and the other materials (that you can probably find cheaper at Home Depot) like mesh tape and putty for the wall to make the concealment more convincing.

I'm gonna make this my weekend project (assuming the stuff gets delivered before then) and will report back on how things went.

Say, Ajax, if you're out there - are the connectors necessary or can I simply strip, crimp, spin and tape the ends together with electrical tape? I know that the signal will pass, I just don't know what the construction of the flat wire is like.

I currently have some "flatter" wire that I tacked to the wall. I painted it the color of the wall, which makes it almost invisible, unless you are looking for it, or if you get close to it. My wife wanted me to hide the wires behind the wall. My brief foray into that venture revealed that my dry-wall is about 1/2 inch from the brick wall that is the outside wall of the house, and it is packed real tight with insulation. No threading wires through there... (and yes, now I have two holes in the wall - covered by the couch and the QS8...)

Anyway, wish me luck.

In reply to:

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Ajax, if you're out there - are the connectors necessary or can I simply strip, crimp, spin and tape the ends together with electrical tape?

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Absolutely, Adrian. The flat wire is.........well..............very flat. Because of this it's a little tricky to match up with conventional round wire. If you're a solderer, you could just lay the round wire on the flat wire and solder. Or, you could use a small screw driver to curve the wire a little, like in the photo below, and solder. Or, once curved you can use some pliers to crimp it into a roll, and try to twist them together. Not sure how easy this would be. But, the point is, I feel the connectors are preferable, but in no way mandatory.