Well, it´s called "diamond wire" which sounds good but wire is actually steel, with embedded diamond grains which do abrasive cutting.
Yes, steel is a (poor) conductor, yet I can´t imagine why would you use it instead of copper unless your Dad works at some stoneworks or quarry company and brings home surplus odds and ends so it´s free for you.
And even so ....
I really like working with solid core 'push back' wire.
I'm always worried about 'nicking' solid core wire when I strip the insulation, and the push back wire takes that worry away.
Tube Amp Wire, Cable and Heat shrink tubing
I'm always worried about 'nicking' solid core wire when I strip the insulation, and the push back wire takes that worry away.
Tube Amp Wire, Cable and Heat shrink tubing
This is a common internet refrain. Ok, it is dirt cheap. But how good is the copper? And why would you expect it to be particularly pure or properly annealed?
Never tried the plenum variety, but the common pvc covered CAT5 is probably the worst sounding wire i have ever tried. Stripping the insulation does not help either. Why people use this for audio is a great mystery. Common multistrand copper wire sounds much better to me. Even magnet wire is in a different class.
Who cares how good the copper is? All that is required is a sufficiently good conductor. Even bad copper is a sufficiently good conductor. As CAT5 has to meet standards for attenuation etc. it is likely that it is better than some random multistrand.
Anything which is copper good enough to make a wire out of, but is not good enough to satisfy certain audiophiles. Copper which is too bad will not be sufficiently ductile to go through the dies - but if you could by some other means make a wire from it then audio would still pass through it unmolested.
I remember, many years ago, a test here where a potato (yes, that is no typo) to connect two signal wires. Just plug the wires into the potato. Nobody heard a difference!
Jan
Jan
A dill pickle works well also - glows nicely with the right power supply!
I think the pickles with garlic sound better.
Need pretty high input impedance and a fresh potato, methinks.
(In general, not to you Jan!)
Cat5 has to pass much tougher signals than anything line-level audio, so it's certainly good enough for a lot of applications. Then again, sometimes coax is what you need. I see nothing wrong with using it for hookup wire inside a chassis, provided you're not relying on it for ground currents. Solid core isn't the most flexible of stuff, which can be a feature sometimes (it stays put)
And if you use a copper wire and a magnesium wire, you can bias the grid with it, too! 1.6V 🙂
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Cat 5 wire isn't designed for stripping and soldering - it's usually used in punch-down blocks.
It can certainly be used as hookup wire, but I find it is very easy to 'nick' and then a few cycles of flexing results in breakage.
I don't understand why standard tinned solid-core hookup wire isn't preferable. It can't be a cost issue since some people who advocate using Cat 5 wire use expensive components.
My favourite is a type of tinned stranded wire where the strands are 'soldered together' inside the insulation, but I only have that from salvaged wire from old gear - I don't know if it is available new, or what it is called.
We used cat5 wire interchangeably with the standard stuff in undergrad labs! It's more liable to breakage for sure, but I've been relatively successful in stripping the stuff with my fingernails.
Anyways, that's not at all a disagreement with what you write, VictoriaGuy (not a bad place to live!), but you can make it work in a pinch, and there's always a hank of it laying around. It's not my first choice either, although if you can maintain the twist, I'm sure it performs a bit better than me manually twisting hookup wire. (which also seems to work fine)
Anyways, that's not at all a disagreement with what you write, VictoriaGuy (not a bad place to live!), but you can make it work in a pinch, and there's always a hank of it laying around. It's not my first choice either, although if you can maintain the twist, I'm sure it performs a bit better than me manually twisting hookup wire. (which also seems to work fine)
Two weeks ago I was measuring an amp with the AP2722 and the cable capacitance (balanced cable) made it oscillate. I ripped out a twisted pair from a length of cat5, and made up a custom cable, no screen. Worked like a champ! No more oscillations, no hum due to the tight twisting, and it even measured well (the amp, I mean).
Cable and wiring is part of the system. If swapping a wire makes a difference in sound, you have one hell of an incompetently designed unit!
Jan
I went through 'a phase' which involved braided Cat 5 for interconnects and speaker cables, so I am 'not without sin'.
🙂
🙂
Apex, Jr. has silver plated, teflon insulated copper wire in both solid and stranded and several gauges. I use it for everything in my projects.
Solid Core Hookup Wire 1/0.6 mm (apx 22AWG) Breadboard Jumpers 11 colours 1-100m | eBay
Cheap and rated to 1000V
Cheap and rated to 1000V
Do you have ANY basis for this assertion??
Mistrusting all off-cuff opinions, I got some data. In the kitchen. Potato is fresh. Indeed you do want a higher impedance. 101k is "high" for modern Hi-Fi.
We also see why we dislike Aluminum (best conductivity per buck)-- it is hard to get a good long-lasting *connection* on Aluminum or on a potato. The number kept changing. On an Aluminum termination I could try higher clamping force; on potato that just makes mashed.
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