Re: Twisted Pairs - how tightly should I be twisting the wire?

Trainwreck amps have very loosley twisted wires, and some of the expensive boutique amps I have seen have very tightly twisted wires. I don't think it matters that much. If you prefer the neat look, you might try the drill and vise method. Take a pair of wires (two olors) and insert one end in a hand drill, and the other in a vides. Turn on the drill and the wires will twist swoothly and evenly and as tightly as you want. Makes for a very neat appearance.



"KingofTone" <KingofTone@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:5b9e4d30-aad4-4576-8a1a-215eae511eb5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Building a 5F4 Super clone (my first build complete from scratch, I've
just been fixing/modding my amps for years), and was thinking about
wiring the filaments. I was just planning on twisting two 18 AWG
wires to form a twisted pair, then the thought of using shielded
twisted pair (I really despise hum) seemed like a decent idea as it's
not so expensive and I wouldn't need that much for one build. I found
some Belden 8719 (overkill, I know, but I can buy it by the foot) 16
AWG shielded twisted pair and reading the spec *** it only has 4.4
twists of wire per foot. I thought maybe it wasn't twisted so tightly
because it's got the shielding. I googled some more and found a few
samples:

Belden 8719 16 AWG (Shielded) twisted pair - 4.4 twists per foot:
http://tinyurl.com/2twezk

Belden 8760 18 AWG (Shielded) twisted pair - 8 twists per foot:
http://tinyurl.com/332ybv

Ebay 16 AWG twisted pair (Unshielded) - not many twists per foot as
you can see in the description and photos:
http://tinyurl.com/2k5okc

Alessandro High-End Guitar Amp Wire 18 AWG twisted pair (Unshielded) -
not many twists per foot visible in the photos:
http://tinyurl.com/3d9dlo


So I guess my question is have I been wasting my time all these years
tightly twisting wire into twisted pairs? In my repairs I can count
twists per inch not twists per foot. Not to mention all that twisting
takes a lot more wire. Should I just be twisting the pairs loosely?

The question also begs the question regarding all those transformer
wires, etc. that need to be twisted into a twisted pair before they
got soldered onto their destination. This needs to be done by the
tech, I've never seen a transformer with sheilded pre-twisted wires
coming out of it. How much twisting is really necessary?

Belden and Alessandro are both high quality products. Even if these
are their "low end" offerings I bet they'd sell two grades of twisted
pairs if it mattered. But look at the guts of some of those vintage
HiWatt builds, they twist their pairs like there's no tomorrow. Look
at Rich K's work - a Rich K twisted pair is a hell of a lot more than
4 twists per foot.

For the moment I'm going to keep twisting them tightly, maybe wasting
my time but at least it looks pretty, and I'll sleep better at night.

Please let me know what you all think - do twisted pairs need to be
that tightly twisted or is a twist every couple of inches OK?

Sean - the hum despiser

.

Loading