making my own speaker wires?

Proper "speaker cable" is always two individually wrapped parallel wires (like a lamp cord or the zip cord you see at the stereo store) while many people mistakenly use "instrument cable" which is one wrapped internal wire surrounded by the other wire which acts as a shield. The two types of cable are not supposed to be interchangeable.

It isn't necessary to spend money on fancy speaker cable. The cheap stuff works just fine (as long as it's the proper gauge for the current it's expected to carry).

 

Yes!

 

The salesperson was just trying to get you to purchase more pricier crap, which isn't surprising...

Like the poster above said, you could use lamp cord, and there would be no appreciable difference.

 

I go to the hardware store and pick up cheap extension cable, I cut off the ends and solder on my quarter inch jacks, I am the only guy in the band with orange speaker cables.

 

NICE!!

Dude, that is a great idea!

Awesome.



Joe.

 

Those will work fine. I use 12g zip cord for some of my short speaker cables.



Joe.

 

One word of advice, keep the polarity on your cables straight.

If you look at your cable, one wire will be a different color, or will have printing on it and the other wont, or something to help you tell one wire from the other.

For instance take silver and gold speaker wire. The color doesn't really matter but make sure you solder the gold wire to the tip and the silver to the sleeve on both ends. Don't put the gold on the tip on one end and then on the sleeve on the other end.

And instrument cables are shielded. Speaker cable is not. You cannot use an instrument cable for your speakers.



Joe.

EDIT: Instrument cables are pretty cheap so I don't make my own. However you can if you want. Just make sure to use shielded wire. The 1/4" connectors are the same as speaker wire.

 

Just make sure your positive and negative connections are to the same wire at each end, so you wont run into phase issues if ever used with other speaker cables/cabs at some future time.

Yes, some people purchase bulk instrement and plugs to solder up their own.

 

Instrument cables carry signal.

Speaker cables carry power.

Yes, both are electricity.

Any time you are going from an amp to an passive speaker use a speaker cable. You are applying power to a speaker.

Any time you are going from a preamp to a power amp you are applying signal. Use an instrument cable.

Going from your combo DI out or preamp out to a mixer you want to use an instrument cable.

That's the gist of it.



Joe.

 

Just my $0.02 here. I am not aware of any high-quality plugs sold at Radio Shack. They have to be good plugs. There is definitely an objective problem with cheap plugs, namely that the sleeve and the threaded part are not machined from a single piece of metal, allowing a gap to form at that crucial junction when the weight of the cable tugs at the plug.

I just noticed that Neutrik has a plug specifically for speakers, and it is not too expensive:

http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&Partnumber=092-147

The same outfit sells speaker wire by the foot:

http://www.partsexpress.com/webpage.cfm?webpage_id=3&CAT_ID=56&ObjectGroup_ID=377

There is nothing magic about this wire, but it exists and is readily available.

 

i do but at the price i can make them not even counting my time it' s prolly better to buy the lifetime guaranteed ones

 

Instrument to amp = instrument cable
mixer to amp = instrument cable
pre-amp to amp = instrument cable
amp to speakers = speaker cables

 

I do.

 

Wouldn't it make sense to use a right angle plug to shorten the lever?

 

Ah, I had forgotten about guitar center. They have this plug at their website:

http://www.guitarcenter.com/Switchcraft-184L-1-4--Phone-Plug--Large-Handle--330351-i1128366.gc

It is an industry standard. For instrument use, they also have the well respected Switchcraft 280 and 226 plugs.

Note in edit: The 184L plug has screw terminals, but they should be soldered.