Electrical wire as speaker wire

[Frank I. Reiter]

The other day in a local hardware store I noticed that wire of the sort one
uses as a cord for electrical appliances is FAR cheaper than speaker wire of
a similar gauge. Would it make inferior speaker wire or would it work just
fine?

(I'm not comparing it to the $$$ specialty wire, just to "Ordinary" speaker
wire).

Frank.
--
___________________________________________________________________
Frank I. Reiter Internet: Fr...@mindlink.bc.ca
MIND LINK! Communications Corp. Surrey, British Columbia, Canada

[Bob Myers]

It'll work just fine - use it. Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew....

Bob Myers KC0EW Hewlett-Packard Co. |Opinions expressed here are not
Systems Technology Div. |those of my employer or any other
my...@fc.hp.com Fort Collins, Colorado |sentient life-form on this planet.

[Thomas W. Matthews]

I won't claim to be the last word on this! I think that wire intended for
wiring electrical outlets can be compared to other speaker wire of the same
gauge. Arguments for large (lower gauge number) apply equally.

The fact that "house wiring" tends to be solid instead of stranded does
make it harder to work with, especially for portable installations.
And one might want electric power distribution wires to look different
from speaker wires on purpose.

Don't let anyone tell you that stranded wires suffer less from skin effect.

Just a thought: Three-conductor electrical wires could be used with the center
wire for one conductor and the outer two wires paralleled for the other conductor.
This would (quite roughly) approximate some of the specialty wire types.

Tom Matthews

[Jeff Brayshaw]

> In article <20...@mindlink.bc.ca>, Fr...@mindlink.bc.ca (Frank I. Reiter) writes:
> |> The other day in a local hardware store I noticed that wire of the sort one
> |> uses as a cord for electrical appliances is FAR cheaper than speaker wire of
> |> a similar gauge. Would it make inferior speaker wire or would it work just
> |> fine?
> |>
> |> (I'm not comparing it to the $$$ specialty wire, just to "Ordinary" speaker
> |> wire).

In response to post about the usage of lamp/appliance cord for speaker wire. There is no difference. both lamp cord and speaker wire(most) are stranded copper wire. In fact lamp cord is generally of higher gauge than the wire labeled as speaker wire which can only help. Also a while back an audio magazine, I forget the name, did an evaluation of lamp cord against the $$$$ speaker cabling and in blind listening tests could detect no difference.
Jeff