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Does anyone else here make their own speaker cables just for the hell of it? Was uploading some pics tonight, and thought I'd share these. A little blown out, but man, I love shrink wrap and soldering irons...

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v642/groundfloor711/cable/

The link doesn’t allow access to the pics.

As Rick mentioned, it says it is private and asking for a password. You might just place the image (img) tags in this post for the pictures.

Not something I would take the time to accomplish, but interested anyway.

I made my cables. Here's a blurry pic of the end result.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=77476
They consist of Axiom bulk wire,GLS locking banana plugs,braided sleeving,shrink tube and cable pants. It was a fun and rewarding project. I have no delussion that they are any better than clamping the bare wire down in the jack. But they look nice and I really like the braided sleeving over the wire.

Those look really nice, Ohmen. You could probably sell them for $25/ft on eBay.

Dooh! I forgot about that... Now you should be able to see them. Thanks... Ohmen, those look good. I used the same cables and banana plug style for my surround speakers. Did you get those splitter sleeves from Parts Express? And, do the cables have a round insulator? The bulk cable I got from Axiom has the two cables side by side, so it lays flat... I wish I could have got round cable...

ps - I also do not think these sound any better/worse than regular cables... I just like making them. Next I want to make some power cables and maybe some balanced cables.

I kind of made cables, but I'm incompetent when it comes to these things. I didn't get enough heatshrink, and it didn't exactly work, either. Oh well. The cables function.

Well, I've made my own and I'm using them now. However, I don't recommend making the kind I made which are like this. It was time consuming, painful to the fingers, and generally a big pain in the a**. However, I did notice a *slight* improvement over the 12 gauge wire I was previously using (these cables are 10 gauge). Still, it was not enough to justify ever repeating the process again. Plus, they are big, heavy, and ugly regardless of the mesh covering I have on them. I don't know why I made them in the first place. I guess it was the challenge and curiosity...or just simply boredom and too much time on my hands.

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Well, I've made my own and I'm using them now. However, I don't recommend making the kind I made which are like this. It was time consuming, painful to the fingers, and generally a big pain in the a**. However, I did notice a *slight* improvement over the 12 gauge wire I was previously using (these cables are 10 gauge). Still, it was not enough to justify ever repeating the process again. Plus, they are big, heavy, and ugly regardless of the mesh covering I have on them. I don't know why I made them in the first place. I guess it was the challenge and curiosity...or just simply boredom and too much time on my hands.

Holy crap!

Those are big. How did you do the braiding? And how long do they run? How do you like the spade clips? I thought about getting those too, but they were spendy...

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Dooh! I forgot about that... Now you should be able to see them. Thanks... Ohmen, those look good. I used the same cables and banana plug style for my surround speakers. Did you get those splitter sleeves from Parts Express? And, do the cables have a round insulator? The bulk cable I got from Axiom has the two cables side by side, so it lays flat... I wish I could have got round cable...

ps - I also do not think these sound any better/worse than regular cables... I just like making them. Next I want to make some power cables and maybe some balanced cables.

Yep, parts express. I actually bought 3 different sizes because I couldn't figure out what I needed. The wire does have round insulation. The wire was tough to get into the cable pants due to the pants being rubber and the Axiom wire has a very rubbery insulation material. The rubber against rubber just wouldn't slide together no matter what I tried to lube it with.

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Holy crap! Those are big. How did you do the braiding? And how long do they run? How do you like the spade clips? I thought about getting those too, but they were spendy...

Actually, I used banana clips. I made mine 10 ft. Here's the exact instructions that I followed. As you can see, there's LOTS & LOTS of braiding!

Nice job, I really like the mini to mini cable. I could use one like that from my Creative Zen to my portable headphone amp.

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Well, I've made my own and I'm using them now. However, I don't recommend making the kind I made which are like this. It was time consuming, painful to the fingers, and generally a big pain in the a**. However, I did notice a *slight* improvement over the 12 gauge wire I was previously using (these cables are 10 gauge). Still, it was not enough to justify ever repeating the process again. Plus, they are big, heavy, and ugly regardless of the mesh covering I have on them. I don't know why I made them in the first place. I guess it was the challenge and curiosity...or just simply boredom and too much time on my hands.

I made a set of these too, I did have quite a bit of time on my hands and it was something i had been wanting to try for a while so when i was able to score enough free cat5 to make these i jumped on it. It definetly takes a bit of time to seperate out the strands, braid them, braid them again, braid them again, and when i was done they were about 2 foot shorter than i was planning on so what i ended up with was a 6' pair. I solderd some radioshack spades onto them and called it a day.

The bad part is theyre too short to use in my setup anyway

As a recent newcomer to real equipment, I made mine too. I used bulk Axiom wire and banana connectors from Blue Jeans and shrink wrapped the ends. It was actually fun and while it probably makes no difference over premade, it makes me feel like I did something to personalize my fledgling system.

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...it makes me feel like I did something to personalize my fledgling system.

There's a lot to be said about that. I agree with this 100% (although I didn't make mine, just using bare wire).

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(although I didn't make mine, just using bare wire).

Best way to go in my opinion, but it's murder on your fingers with those bloody posts being as close as they are.