DIY speaker cable made from cat 5 type cable

Bob,
What you're describing doesn't follow the typical recipes for Cat5 braids...leaving the PVC insulation on (containing 4 twisted pairs) & just braiding them would be a Cat5 faux pas.

Braiding them is a little work (not that bad really), but one can either do the work themselves & keep the cost down or pay for someone else's labor or margin..we all pick out poison.

Eterc,
good source, wrong part number.

Everyone's talking about the cable, but for essentially the same cost you may be able to make something better than the CAT5 braid. Yes, it did sound better than stock 12 uage speaker wire, but it also had a bit of a smearing effect. This was not terribly noticeable to me until I heard it removed though, so YMMV.

I am talking about a pair I made by just braiding 3 CAT5 wires together. This smearing may be lessened if you take the cables apart and match up wire pairs with similar twist ratios. That is a lot of work though.

Jon's 89259 cross conencts have a much clearer presentation and no smearing of the treble. Imaging is more precise and defined than with the CAT5.

Good luck,
Bob

Eterc, that cable is not the good FEP insulation type which is the type that is called for in all the DIY literature. Right below it on the catalog page are 7365K23 and 28 which are both FEP Plenum rated type which might be ok. I found some cat 5 cable at Home Depot that I thought was ok but only 3 of the 4 pairs were the FEP type insulation with the other being PVC type.

For future reference:

http://www.mcmaster.com/

Part number: 7365K17

Category 5E Cable Standard, Gray Jacket

Quantity Per Ft.
1-99 Ft. $0.24
100 or more 0.19

I finally got them made and my system up and running. They seem to have make the sound as if a slight veil has been lifted off of the sound.

I have some of the Plenum rated cat5e, Belden 4 pair you can have. Send me an email with your address and how many feet you want.
Jim

I have also checked and the Belden 1585A from Radio Shack (their # 910-1603) is no longer avaliable and the replacement cat 5 cable doesn't use FEP insulation.

Jea48, do you have enough to make cables as described in my previous comments?
Thanks

I heard back from General Cable very quickly. It has the following constuction for the Home Depot cable:

CONSTRUCTION:
Conductor 24 AWG solid bare annealed copper
Insulation 3 pairs FEP / 1 pair Polyolefin
Pairing Varying short pair lay
Color Code Bandmarked, 4 pair Color Code
RipCord Polyester, Applied under Jacket
Jacket PVC

As can be seen the 4th pair does not have FEP insulation. Won't this degrade performance or is this OK? I'm looking at making bi-wire cables using 4 of these cables per speaker, 2 for the woofer and 2 for the mid/tweeter of my VR4jrs.

I found the cat 5 cable at Home Depot @ $0.41 per foot. It is stuff made by General Cable. I tried to look it up on their web site but could not find it. The only cat 5 I found was all pvc insulation or 3 pairs w/ FEP insulation and 1 pair with some sort of poly... type insulation. I e-mailed to ask about the type at Home Depot and hopefully they will respond.

some Radio Shacks and Home Depot both sell it by the foot.

When I made Cat 5 speaker cables following the design published by Chris ven Haus, I obtained the Belden plenum-rated cable #1585A from Radio Shack.

http://www.venhaus1.com/diycatfivecables.html

Regards,

I have some pieces of 4 pair solid wire cat 5e you can have. I usually toss the spools with less than 75ft on them. How much do you need? I may have some 50 pair cat 5e solid wire, I would have to look tomorrow.

How many conductors do you use for each speaker pair?
Here is a link to a wire calculator.
http://home.hiwaay.net/~rgs/awgcalculator.html
Jim