DIY Speaker Cable

[NotALamer]

I'm planning on making a Full Frequency Range Cable (http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/ffrc_e.html) and I was thinking I might be able to make it more compact by removing the jackets on the individual cat5 cables. I don't see any reason this would affect the performance of the cable, and removing the jackets would make it much less bulky. Does this make any sense? I don't know a whole lot about speaker cables so let me know if I'm way off base here.

[thehaens@cox.net]

Check out this link (http://www.venhaus1.com/diycatfivecables.html ) , I got the same idea and made one years ago from this link and made one. I used 3 15 foot strands (after braiding it was about 12 feet long) and braided it. The cable isn't aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but if you have a few hours to kill try it out....

BTW - I didn't notice any sonic difference from the cable I am currently using (Monster Z3) so I ended up tossing the CAT-5.....

If you do a google search CAT-5 Speaker Cable you'll see a lot of instructions on this..

scott

[steveinaz]

I'm planning on making a Full Frequency Range Cable (http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/ffrc_e.html) and I was thinking I might be able to make it more compact by removing the jackets on the individual cat5 cables. I don't see any reason this would affect the performance of the cable, and removing the jackets would make it much less bulky. Does this make any sense? I don't know a whole lot about speaker cables so let me know if I'm way off base here.

I wouldn't recommend that. The idea of leaving the strands insulated is to reduce "strand jumping." A type of Hyperlitz array so to speak.

[mantis]

I wouldn't waste my time trying to build something that has already been perfected at a good price.

If this kind of thinking goes into your speaker wire, look no further then Kimber Kable 4pr or 8pr. Excellent quality wire at a great price. You can buy it in bulk or buy it terminated. Forget the cat5 speaker wire. It's been done in 1979.

Dan

[steveinaz]

Dan's right, unless you just want to DIY for the enjoyment/satisfaction factor.

[NotALamer]

I'm building it because I like to DIY and it's a pretty simple project, not because I think I can drastically improve the cat5 speaker cable design or anything like that.

When I said remove the jackets I didn't mean the insulation around the individual wires. There are three lengths of cat5 per speaker cable and each one has four twisted pairs with a jacket around it. If I remove the three jackets the individual wires will still be insulated, so it is still a Litz wire.

[gidrah]

I built a couple of pairs of these and was pretty impressed. Not the best I've heard, but it was pretty inexpensive and kinda fun.