chassis wire

[Evaas]

I'm trying to figure out what kind of wire to use to connect to the circuit board, binding posts, rca jacks, etc.. I don't want to get into such things as material, or stranded vs single core, so much as what guage is best? Assuming fairly good quality copper wire, I'm thinking something like 22 guage is good except for power supply lines which should be around 16???

I've done a lot of searching and haven't really found an answer to the size question. Any comments? also any pointers to cheap wire would be much appreciated because this stuff can get excessive

-Evan

[herm]

I have bought from Steve at:

http://www.apexjr.com/wire.html

I think the Silver plated with Teflon insulator is
politically correct for hook-up wire.

Your sizes look fine to me.

[Sch3mat1c]

Copper is plenty conductive for all but your most demanding audiophools , guage is determined by current. 30AWG is good for about 100mA, 24 for an ampere, 18 for 5, and so on.
If for some reason, resistance is too high in the run, you can always go for something heavier.

Tim

[Evaas]

Herm - politically correct.. lol thats a perfect term for it.

Tim - thanks for the guideline. So the maximum signal current for my aleph is gonna bethe speaker output and the bias supply at 2 to 2.5 amps. if then 24AWG is good for an amp, then 22 would be around 2 amps? that might not be quite enough so it seems like 20 would be better for me, agree? Do I need to worry about using smaller wires for the lower voltage signals? I don't want to bother if it isn't gonna make much difference.

thanks

Evan

[jackinnj]

and very good for inter-connects. You get 8 color coded wires, braided in 2's. I use it all the time. For power interconnects I have an assortment of #16 stranded wires bought from an aerospace surplus store.

[Sch3mat1c]

Yep, for 2-3A 20-22AWG would work fine. Stranded is generally better than solid because it's easier to move around and get into place, and if it gets moved around a lot, it won't break from repeated bending.

For signal lines, it can be anything you have on hand, if it's 18AWG then whatever. Keep in mind anything thinner than 26AWG is pretty thin, starts getting hard to handle...

Tim

[ced]

I believe in general you want low impedance cable (ie thick wire, say 1.5mm2 or 2.5mm2) for power transfer and low capacitance (generally thin, say good microphone cable) for signal transfer.
cheers
Ced