• The move to the new server is done. There are some software and database maintenance updates in process. This has us passing the hat around to help out. We appreciate any donations. Seriously, even a dollar helps. The payment page may be found here - https://www.audiokarma.org/support.html

Magnet Wire for Speakers?

fredt300b

Active Member
Has anyone used magnet wire for the internal wiring in their speakers. It seems to me that it would be a good choice as a budget alternative to cheap stranded pvc-insulated speaker wire. There's already quite a bit of it in the signal path considering the inductors and voice coils are made of it. It's solid core, which is good, and you could use 20ga and spiral several pieces to form a "litz" wire for each conductor where a larger guage than 20 is needed. Bottlehead uses about 120 ft of a high purity magnet wire in their Straight 8, which is highly regarded by the diy audio community.

The reason I'm asking is because I'm building a pair of line arrays, and their 16 drivers per speaker uses quite a bit of internal wiring. On my budget this requires using really cheap wire, no $2.00/ft here. I was thinking that 20 gauge magnet wire, at $10 per 350ft roll, might be a good alternative to generic stranded speaker wire.

Any reactions? :yes: :no:
 
Register to hide this ad
Can't think of any reason why it wouldn't work.

How about used 14 Ga house 3-conductor AC wire? I know I got a lot of that when someone was renovating. Strip the outer cover off and you have excellent solid conductor 14 Ga copper - and it bends nicely for those inter-connects!

You get 3 colours too! :D


Paul
 
I haven't tried it yet, but plan to.
You could also pick up a length of cat5 wire. 8 strands of 24awg solid core.
 
Back
Top Bottom