.925 Sterling Silver - any good for wiring!?

[Galgo]

Hello there,
I've got few meters of nice 24AWG twisted solid wires made of .925 Sterling Silver.
AFAIK it's 92.5% Ag and the rest is probably copper.

Is it any good for internal wiring/interconnects or maybe even speaker cables?

I can heatshrink/twist/or braide it as needed but I wondered if it worth the troubles or is it a No No for audio signals?
Regards,
Gal

[Damon Hill]

Try soldering it with regular solder and flux. The copper content may lead to oxidization problems, aka 'firescale', whereas fine silver's oxides are conductive and should be less inhibiting to soldering.

I can't find an exact electrical conductivity for sterling other than it's between pure silver and copper.

[Galgo]

I have a 2% silver solder as well as eutectic ratio solder (63/37) - wouldn't the silver be better?
I can cover it with glue filled heatshrink to help vs. the oxidations...
I couldn't find anything related to it's electrical properties either - how bad can it be?

BTW - if we are on the subject - how about gold plated nickel wire (I can get 20-24AWG pretty cheap) - any better or just stupid?

I just like experimenting - but don't really want to waste my time going "too far" ::
Gal

[Damon Hill]

I much prefer to use eutectic alloys such as 67/37 or 2% silver content; they make nice shiny and reliable joins. Haven't heard of anyone using sterling in wiring, so it's hard to say how suitable it really is; ductility problems, perhaps?

Gold and nickel are less conductive than either silver or copper, so not very suitable for wiring. Properly plated/alloyed, they can make reliable connectors.

Pure silver is well outside my budget, however teflon insulated wire is usually silver-plated copper because the teflon can attack copper under certain circumstances. Solders nicely and the insulation doesn't melt, although it's difficult to strip.

[Galgo]

Originally Posted by Damon Hill

Haven't heard of anyone using sterling in wiring, so it's hard to say how suitable it really is; ductility problems, perhaps?

Which probably suggest it's not a preferable solution from some unknown (to me) reason...

ductility is actually pretty good - easier to handle than pure silver and stronger too (one of the main advantages of this alloy)...

I wonder if someone can enlighten us if there is a good reason NOT to use sterling silver wires?

Gal

[Damon Hill]

One way to find out: try it yourself! Practice soldering it first. Then, if it's bare wire, thread it through some teflon tubing and hook it up somewhere.

But yeah, the fact that it's not generally offered as electrical wire might suggest it's not used; perhaps pure silver just has that certain audiophile cachet. I know I'm too cheap to use it.

[AndrewT]

I am not at all sure of the physics/chemistry of alloys and the way they change characteristics of the resulting lattice.

I seem to remember that an alloy of Silver and Copper has a resistance that is greater than either of the constituents on it's own.

I know that aluminium behaves very much this way.

[qusp]

I assume we are talking about jewelry supplies here and that you are looking through their catalogue or already have some jewelers supplies and thought you might try it out? i'm using hard annealed sterling and 9ct white gold (also hard annealed) for the male pins in the pin headers of my ackodac, well for the signal pins anyway, will let you know how it goes. just be quick soldering it or you will make it soft again, it will lose the properties given by annealing if heated too long. I also use the solid white and yellow gold as pins for DIY molded headphone connectors with good results.

[texaslonghorn]

I have used pure silver (minimum 99.9%) for years in chassis wiring, interconnects, speaker wiring and various DIY connectors. What is interesting is that - in all that time - I never heard anyone explain WHY sterling should not be used. The discussions simply said avoid it. Yet there is also a lot of support for silver plated copper wiring... I don't know. I might suggest that a meaningful trial of sterling would include a comparison to copper and pure silver. I have done head-to-head comparisons between copper and pure silver *in my system* over the years and I believe there is a difference. This is my personal opinion - not intended to spark an argument or discussion.

[sangram]

Interesting. I've been experimenting with a custom alloy of silver-copper (not really sterling, but in a range from .97 to .94) for interconnect and chassis wire. The product looks almost like silver but with the slightest tint of copper and sparkles when held up to the light. By contrast, silver has a slightly more matte appearance.

One possible reason for not recommending the resulting alloy is that it is extremely difficult to work by hand. In the first batch, I simply could not straighten the wire out. With silver wire, since it is very soft (mechanically) it is easy to remove kinks and bends. This one behaved exactly like a spring, refusing to uncoil and the kinks were a nightmare - and even though it is different from sterling I believe the latter would behave similarly.

FWIW, the jewellers here can't wind the wire too thin (they roll the wire by hand), I estimate about 26AWG and no thinner, and not really the last word in finishing either. I use 24 for silver, 26 for silver/copper, I would definitely like to try thinner wire.

Cannot comment on sonic results yet as we are still experimenting and I do not have the correct connectors on my equipment anyway. My limited feedback shows that connector geometry and fit, and the construction of the interconnect cable including the wrapping and braiding play a pretty big role in the 'sound' of the cable, maybe more so than the actual wire used - not that wire does not make a difference, but probably minutae.

Edit: Andrew: Sterling silver and coin silver (.925/0.9) have electrical conductivity of ~88%, copper is 100% and silver is 105% (IACS).

Edit2: the actual reason for doing this is that being the kind of economy we are, getting assured purity of copper is extremely difficult and there is no way to test, and we can't always use pure silver in all our projects - hence the experiment. Importing, with the kind of import taxes we have, is simply not a good long-term solution, though that is pretty much the only way we can get good copper in our country.