Re: Speaker Cables


"fourstring" <fourstring@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"JoeSpareBedroom" <dishborealis@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Brian Running" <brunning@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
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JoeSpareBedroom wrote:

A musical acquaintance who is otherwise a very nice person loves to go
on and on endlessly about technical things, until his victims become
catatonic and collapse. Yesterday, I made the mistake of mumbling
something about using some nice 14 gauge (yes-it's 14) speaker wire to
make a 30 foot link for when I want to put one cabinet at the front of
the stage. I immediately got a speech about how I really should use the
kind available at the music store because they're shielded to avoid
heptaflambular perambulatory pierogie interference yadda yadda yadda.

Speaker cables are something that you make up once and expect them to
last for years and years. Use good-quality materials. 12-ga wire is
not very expensive, there's no reason not to use it, and there's no
reason to use cable thicker than 12 gauge. As Benj mentioned,
two-conductor, rubber-sheathed power cord is great as speaker cable. It
goes for fifty-sixty cents a foot at Home Depot. Unwind some off the
spool and make sure it's very flexible and lies nice and limp. You
don't want cables that twist and coil, you want it to lie flat on your
stage. Sometimes you'll find "low-temperature," "cold weather," or
"outdoor" cable, that's usually nice and flexible and limp. Also, make
sure it will fit into your Speakon connectors -- though I've never run
into any yet that didn't.

No Speakon sockets on the Ampeg B2-R. There's a plugged blank hole,
though. I suspect they use the same chassis for bigger models. Anyway,
I'm stuck with phone plugs at the moment.

1/4" jacks (UKspeak) are a bad idea
as arcing can occur at higher power
levels at the tips which is not good and
neither is the connector secure in the socket.
Fitting Speakons is easy and they're not expensive.
-C-

In over forty years, I've never seen a 1/4" jack arc, but you're right,
speakons are far superior to 1/4" jacks. The problem is that many older amps
and speaker cabs came with 1/4" jacks and it isn't all that easy to change
them out. The fact is that 1/4" jacks were the standard for over fifty years
and they didn't cause all that much trouble during all that time, though it
seems obvious that speakons will give even less trouble.
If you want the strongest, most reliable connections, you should definitely
retrofit with speakons, but it isn't absolutely necessary.


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