DIY Speaker cables and more.

Pulsar

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Hello,

For a long time now I have been looking at making some cables for my HiFi. I have now decided to go ahead with it, and have just sourced some supplies to make some mains cables (thanks Richard ;) ) The next cables I want to make are speaker cables. I have been reading on TNT audio and think I may make some cables based on Cat 5 network cable. I do have a few questions though:

Has anyone on here made speaker cables based on Cat 5 cable? If so what recipe did you use, and what did you think of the cable?

Where can I source the components needed (Cat 5 cable) at a reasonable price?

I am also considering making a coaxial digital cable, possibly from the TNT design. I believe that this may require some crimping tools to be purchased for the connectors at each end of the cable, where can I get these, and are they expensive?

I appreciate your help/advise very much.

Cheers

Rob
 
Ive tried a couple of designs, i tried the ffrc one ages back and was very pleased at the time, but i believe mine was a slight deviation so took an enormous length of time doing. I have just done my whole setup with the simpler design of twisting 3 pairs of cat 5 together..... they both sound the same to me! Better that crappy cable and nothing different that i can hear from good cable.

I didnt try the ubyte designs for fear of my soldering skills melting the insulator and ruining my amp! :eek:

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Cat5 cable can be bought very cheaply - around £40 for 305m (!) Not sure if they recommend a particular type of cat5 for the cables, so the cost may be higher. Shorter lengths are not usually proportionally cheaper - the 305m (1000ft) is such a standard size. I guess you could always run a LAN round your house while you're at it!
CPC sell it, I'm sure - they do free delivery for orders over £30, too.

Decent crimping tools can be quite expensive - not the sort of thing to buy just for a couple of cables. There are a couple of people around here who possess the technology to crimp cables up, though.
 
Thanks for the info guys.

After looking more thoroughly on TNT - audio, I founfd a resource guide that recomends a cable from maplin. The code is VB20W and for 100m it works out to £30, and I have a store 5 mins from my house. May go for this stuff not sure.

Cheers

Rob

P.S Has anyone made one of these cable?
 
There are a number of maplin varieties..... i have tried a purple one and a standard grey one..... both sound the same so go for cheapest. I actually saw in the maplin flyer thing i got that the 100m reel was £15...... annoyed me since ive just bought 3 at £25 each! :mad:

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Yep I've made it from cheapo grey CAT5 and it sounds great :smashin:

See here ....

showthread.php


Dave
 
I've just made some of my own speaker cable based on mains flex but utilising various other techniques. Just finished running it (if thee is such a thing!) and have compared it to my old cable. To my ears there is no difference in sound, the only difference is about £100!
Going to run a test next week comparing Kimber 8TC and Nordost Solar wind
Cheers
John
 
I made my own speaker cable out of mains flex too - it cost £25 - £30 for 100m, and took me an afternoon of measuring, cutting, soldering, twisting, taping etc. Sounds fantastic to me ;)
 

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