Twisted magnet wire for speaker cables?

[btom]

Hello. New to the forum. I been thinking about speaker wire lately. Currently using 16g zip cord. But recently I dropped by the mapleshade internet site to check out there cd's and noticed a speaker wire (clearview golden helix). It seems to be made of tightly twisted enamel coated magnet wire. Anyway, I searched the net for any information I could find about these. It appears they are essentially a tightly twisted pair of 18g magnet wire with outstanding end result. They also sell a set they call double helix (4 wire?) for quite a bit more dough.

This all got me wondering about making my own version using 4 20g magnet wires twisted in a star-quad pattern and cross connected similar to canare 4s11. Has anyone tried this? I would guess the capacitance would be quite high but probably not nearly as high as braided cat5.

Can anyone suggest a good US internet source for high quality magnet wire?

Thanks.

[btom]

Yes, it's a good idea. A good supplier is PlanetEngineers. Might try polyimide for the the enamel. Good luck!

[fdegrove]

Hi,

Might try polyimide for the the enamel. Good luck!

Which is what I used for a range of LS wires I once designed about a decade ago, only this time 6 Nine silver iso of copper.

Works great.

Cheers,

[btom]

Myself, I've been contemplating several. But have about settled on first trying a 4 strand braid or a star-quad with 20 awg (.89mm). However since I only want to buy one roll of wire I really want to be sure of the size. What do you think?

Also, I've been trying to come up to speed on understanding the electrical properties of various designs. That appears to be mostly beyond my meager math skills. I was able to dig up some basic formulas for induction, capacitance and impedence for twisted pair and I'm trying to figure how to scale to star-quad or 4 braid and on from there. From what I've been able to find it looks like star-quad roughly decreases inductance by factor of 3 and increases capacitance by roughly the same factor, whereas 4 braid goes the same way but at more like a factor of 2. Does that seem like a fairly good working model? Thanks.

Tom.

[fdegrove]

Hi,

It so happens I designed using starquad. Other than that i think LS cable is all that critical.

Use whatever works best with you amp, speakers, I'd say.

Does that seem like a fairly good working model? Thanks.

Sure does.

Cheers,

[Gregm]

Originally posted by btom
This all got me wondering about making my own version using 4 20g magnet wires twisted in a star-quad pattern

I'm using such wire, 1,2mm for bass / 0,6 for main NOT twisted. Rather, I've wound the wire round a 2cm ptfe "hose" used by electricians for wall-embedded wire runs... capacitance is low.

However I live in a reasonably quiet area; I suppose that helps me vs oscillation (wind band-width amp)

On the bright side, I replaced very expensive commercial wires with this simple contraption...

[btom]

Thanks Greg and Fred. Well, I guess I'd better just buy the wire and start playing around. Cheers!!!