Thoughts and musings on DIY silver solid core speaker cable

[gleeds]

It's really hard to generalize with speaker cable. Speaker and amp electrical characteristics can vary a lot and best SC can vary a lot too. If you got 5N silver that can sound really nice, but 12g wire isn't intended to be bent repeatedly so over time the wire will crack. IMO, you're best off using multiple runs of smaller gauge wire, maybe 24g or so. Or see what you can get Neotech UPOCC silver/teflon for. It's 6N+ and far better vs regular silver, but it can be pricey.

I would recommend to get some inert gas, maybe just something used to fill wine bottles, and flush as much air out of the teflon tubes and seal the ends to prevent corrosion. Sealing the ends isn't easy though, there are some primers that allow cyanoacrilate to stick to some degree, but the best adhesives are very expensive and not for sale to the public.

Another option would be to use enamel to paint the wire and thus prevent corrosion, this is how magnet wire is insulated.

Dave, really menchy of you to offer DIY cable advice. It's hard to separate the truly knowledgeable and high quality producers of cables these days. I suspect you are one of them

 

[DasguteOhr]

Buy a mundorf silverfoil coil awg 16 1.0mH thats enough for 2x 3.0m(4 foils) speakercable.
unwind silvercoil polish then paint against corrosion. move into cotton. take good plug and solder. then you promised one of the best speaker cables out there.

MUNDORF SFC16 Silver Foil Coil 0.22mH - Audiophonics

coil mundorf foil coil silver sfc16 0.22mh

www.audiophonics.fr

Cotton tube

Flachkordel hellgrau 18mm Baumwolle online kaufen

Flachkordel hellgrau 18mm Baumwolle

www.naehkaufhaus.de

Plug silver bananas

Silver Bananas: GERMAN HIGHEND

German Highend Silverbananas

german-highend.com

Or here silverfoil diy section

Selbstbau Zubehör High-End Audiokabel Bausätze | SOLIDCOREAUDIO

✂ Für alle DIYer, die gerne selbst bauen, biete ich hochwertige Bausätze zur Herstellung von High-End Audiokabeln an

www.solidcoreaudio.de

 

[Agent86]

Buy a mundorf silverfoil coil awg 16 1.0mH thats enough for 2x 3.0m(4 foils) speakercable.
unwind silvercoil polish then paint against corrosion. move into cotton. take good plug and solder. then you promised one of the best speaker cables out there.

MUNDORF SFC16 Silver Foil Coil 0.22mH - Audiophonics

coil mundorf foil coil silver sfc16 0.22mh

www.audiophonics.fr

Cotton tube

Flachkordel hellgrau 18mm Baumwolle online kaufen

Flachkordel hellgrau 18mm Baumwolle

www.naehkaufhaus.de

Plug silver bananas

Silver Bananas: GERMAN HIGHEND

German Highend Silverbananas

german-highend.com

Or here silverfoil diy section

Selbstbau Zubehör High-End Audiokabel Bausätze | SOLIDCOREAUDIO

✂ Für alle DIYer, die gerne selbst bauen, biete ich hochwertige Bausätze zur Herstellung von High-End Audiokabeln an

www.solidcoreaudio.de

Stephan, thank you for the helpful suggestions and links to silver foil cables!

 

[Kingrex]

I wonder what happened to the original poster and how the cable turned out. I have tried the mill spec silver coated copper on power and speaker. Both were not good at all.

 

[Taz]

Just as an aside I once tried some silver tube in cotton then Teflon with a mylar shield and it was actually quite good, it was given to me and i don't tend to move cables once in place that's where they stay so the bending and breaking thing never bothered me.

 

[whistleraudio]

I wonder what happened to the original poster and how the cable turned out. I have tried the mill spec silver coated copper on power and speaker. Both were not good at all.

Silver coated and solid silver are two completely different animals.

 

[DaveC]

I have tried the mill spec silver coated copper on power and speaker. Both were not good at all.

It really depends on the design.

I once reterminated a PC that used a bunch of solid core, twisted pair, mil-spec wire... probably 20 twisted pairs in total, maybe 24g or so. They had all of the downsides of this kind of wire amplified to a massive degree, just one of these cables ruined my system.

OTOH, I make my Clear Bass PCs out of 12g stranded mil-spec wire in a std braid, and while it's not as good as my solid silver PC, it's surprisingly good and for the price, a great value even for full range applications if you don't want a warmer cable.

I haven't done enough experimentation to know for sure, but I suspect that high capacitance designs make the issues associated with this kind of wire much worse, and it depends a lot on the application. IME, in some applications, like subwoofer cabling and some others, it's really excellent and very economical. In a high-end system, I'd ONLY use it for subwoofer cabling though.