Diy "recepies" for speaker wire anyone?

Of the many DIY speaker cable recipes, two stand out immediately as the most used, respected, and tested; Chris Venhaus' excellent Cat 5 as mentioned above (must be teflon, plenum doesn't assure this), and Jon Risch's Belden #89259 recipes (also interconnects). I made a set of (12' bi-wire) CV's Cat 5's two months ago and they provide the most amazing high freq' clarity I've ever heard (w/o glare), mid's are perfect, and bass is tight and beautifully clean. Total cost for my set was $37. While I've never owned $1,000+ cables, I would assume that whatever benefit they may have over these would be so minute as to not be worth the money. The downside is that the Cat 5's take lot's of time, effort, and blisters to make. I spent a month braiding, braiding, and braiding. Although, from what I've read, I must have gone way overboard on on detail because most people have made them in between a weekend and two weeks. Anyway, read the reviews CV has on his website. Just make sure that your Cat 5 is TEFLON, I originally bought plenum from Home Depot and quickly realized there is a big difference. A friend of mine, Gomer, has vastly simplified the process for these so that a it only takes a few hours using a dill to wind the pairs into a lrge cable. His idea is new (3 weeks) and relatively untested,but could prove to be the next grea thing. From preliminary tests, his cables exhibit better technical #'s for C, I, and R. http://beyond_gomer.tripod.com/ As for Jon Risch's recipe, I have not made the speaker cables, but I did make his interconnects using the Belden 89259 (got 10" free from Belden) and they are terrific, they have a terrific overall balance and clarity. The are quick and easy to make also, just 30 minutes for 3 sets of 2' IC's. The speaker cable should only take an hour or two. The downside is that it is very hard to find short lengths (20-30') of this cabe for sale, and you may have to buy a 100' spool for $110, but use the left over to make IC's or put it up for sale on AudioAsylum or Audioreview and you'll sell it in a day. http://members.nbci.com/Jon_Risch/i1.htm Here is an excellent listing of many DIY cables and interconnects. It should get you started: http://www.msu.edu/user/churches/diy.htm I

If things work out, I am planning to do a parallel run of Harmonic Technology Pro 12, and will likely add something else to this "shotgun" as well (some other cable, perhaps 14 AWG). My goal is to have a final AWG between 8 and 9. I have the Pro-9 right now (I double up the bi-wire speaker end, for single wire connection), and want to have something that might compete with it in overall performance (and maybe surpass it in some ways), for less $$. Because Maggies get heavy usage in my system (they don't have binding posts), I want to use WBT locking bananas on the speaker end. For the amp end, I want to use Wireworld solid silver spades. This would be a single-wire configured cable pair, around or just under 6 feet long. The rest of the bulk Pro-12 cable will be used inside my speaker projects. Can anyone think of a good reason why I shouldn't do this?....................Hi Tml2, I burried my hatchet, then dug it up, melted it into a steel speaker cable, doesn't sound too good...the music has a rusted character.

Just finished "Chris VenHaus" DIY Cat 5 speaker cable, 12' (Whew!) noticable improvment is sound quality, wife says "richer" I say "sharper" sound. www.diycatfivecables.com (from 16ga monster)

If you use good quality wire.Copper conductors teflon dialectric with a good copper shield.This is the basis for a good cable.They will sound as good as some of the very expensive cables.Cost has no bearing.There are some 1k cables out there that sound like crap compared to other 1k cables.you just have to sort through the Hype.The people doing the big volume adds are typically giving you less for your money.

Check out my web site for all your diy cable needs: http://community.webtv.net/audionutAK/AlansDIYCable

Ordinary 10 Pair (20) wire Indoor Telephone Cable makes excellent speaker wire. Colour coding waries from different manufacturers. One common type has a white wire paired with a coloured one. Connect all the whites together and use as one lead, and all the coloured ones together for the other lead. It presents both Low R and Low L. It is cheap, sometimes free if you know somebody who works for a telephone company. It works wery well, try it.

enjoythemusic.com has some cable projects.

Try www.audioasylum.com and then the cable forum. Also use search feature to find threads on DIY cable. All these people do is discuss cable, a lot of it is DIY. Jeff

There's at least one good website with DIY info for cables, but I can't find the URL at the moment. My reply may generate a few arguments, but here are the basics. If you assume the speakers sound best connected directly to the amp, then you want to minimize resistance (R), series inductance (L), and parallel capacitance (C). Lowest R is from big wires, but if you try house wire the L will change (it goes up) with frequency (that's bad.) Lowest L is from wires right next to each other, but that gives highest C (bad.) Lowest C is from wires a few inches away from each other, but that gives highest L (also bad.) The trick is to find the best tradeoff. The ones I've tried are with lots of small wires close together. I've tried ribbon cable, twisted and untwisted, and braiding fine wires together. Haven't tried parallel runs of coax or copper strip yet, they're on the list. My costs are much lower than even cheap cables. I'm pleased with the performance. Do they rival expensive cables? I'd be happy to borrow good cables for a few months to compare.