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Speaker wire... Diy?

I am new to this, so please bare with me. I always thought 12 gauge speaker wire, bare on each end, was best. But there is Kimber, Nord, etc, that seem to be incrementally better! Can I buy the components and put together my own $17000 speaker wires? If so, where can they be purchased, and which are good enough to be used? Which terminations are best for sound? Which wire? Length? Guage? 
ddjr
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
Have you been peeking, Dave? 😬
dave_b's avatar
dave_b
3,159 posts
 
😗
dgarretson
2,588 posts
 
Over the years I’ve had commercial speaker cables to $15K and several DIY recipes. My favorite is a DIY of stacked, soft-annealed .999 silver foils and solid silver spades. Termination is solderless with compression fittings and all internal mating surfaces treated with Total Contact graphene paste. The cable is shielded with grounded, tinned-copper braid.  It entails numerous twists of teflon and pulls through silk and is tedious to build. There is around 1.5 lbs. of silver in it, totaling around $1K at commodity prices. A build with large gauge precious metals is likely prohibitive for a commercial cable at less than $15K MSRP. BTW, distributor and dealer margins on commercial cables are the highest in audio.
dave_b's avatar
dave_b
3,159 posts
 
Silver 😝
dgarretson
2,588 posts
 
Not all silver is the same.  Ask Duelund.
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