internal speaker wire for a 4x12

[mom]

I'm replacing the 16 awg lamp cord in my hiwatt cab with 10 or 12 awg stranded automotive primary wire (or landscape wire). Mills Acoustics use 14 awg automotive primary wire so i figured, why not? They said they would use 12 but they use clips instead of solder and 12 awg doesn't fit. I called Bogner and they said they use 10 awg speaker wire. Germino - 18 awg. Bought new soldering iron, solder, and desoldering braid. Will there be any change in tone? Doubtful, but maybe. I can always change it back. Why do it? Because.

Email from Dave at Mills...

Hi,
We use 14 ga. stranded copper automotive primary wire. It runs cool, handles any signal spiking and many reports come in that it helps to reduce amp hum. As to whether other types of "oxygen free, silver coated, NASA approved" wiring improves actual tone? It's debatable. Some say it does while others say there is no difference. We are looking to receive a set of these wires from Lava Cable to test in one of our cabs and we are also building an Afterburner for them for their demos.

I wish I had the definitive answer but I don't think there is one....at least yet.

Some of the stuff I think he was refering to...

http://www.lavacable.com/scs_wire.html

So, what are your guys general opnions about the type and gauge of wire used in guitar (bass too, I supposes) speaker cabs and how much they effect the tone?

 

[ratherdashing]

Re: internal speaker wire for a 4x12

Why are you doing this exactly? Was there something wrong with your cab?

 

[mom]

Re: internal speaker wire for a 4x12

Why are you doing this exactly? Was there something wrong with your cab?

Nope. Just curious. The wire costs 30 cents a foot so I figured It would be an inexpensive and reversable expiriment.

 

[devastone]

Re: internal speaker wire for a 4x12

There won't be any difference, but if you feel the need, go for it. 10 and 12 ga is a PITA to work with.

 

[zzmoore]

Re: internal speaker wire for a 4x12

I have never, ever seen/heard any problems that arose from using 18 AWG in a speaker cab.
12 AWG !!!!!!! Good Grief. Your home has 14 in the walls.......
What Ever.

 

[ratherdashing]

Re: internal speaker wire for a 4x12

There won't be any difference, but if you feel the need, go for it. 10 and 12 ga is a PITA to work with.

Agree w. all of this.

 

[mom]

Re: internal speaker wire for a 4x12

I have never, ever seen/heard any problems that arose from using 18 AWG in a speaker cab.
12 AWG !!!!!!! Good Grief. Your home has 14 in the walls.......
What Ever.

Tried it. Meh. No big dif. Bogner use 10 awg.

 

[devastone]

Re: internal speaker wire for a 4x12

Tried it. Meh. No big dif. Bogner use 10 awg.

I'm guessing it was less difference than that... Hopefully you didn't spend too much time on it.

 

[Sporky McGuffin]

Re: internal speaker wire for a 4x12

Given that standard mains cable (2.5mm^2 if I remember correctly) can handle 3kW quite happily, there's no point upgrading standard speaker wire unless you have some sort of ridiculous uber-amp that puts out more than 3kW (in the UK that's the most you can draw from a standard mains socket anyways).

Yet more marketing bullhonky.

Furthermore there needs to be no difference between guitar and bass wiring -either will happily carry DC (ie 0Hz) and well into RF. Do not be duped.

 

[Jessie Sammler]

Re: internal speaker wire for a 4x12

Given that standard mains cable (2.5mm^2 if I remember correctly) can handle 3kW quite happily, there's no point upgrading standard speaker wire unless you have some sort of ridiculous uber-amp that puts out more than 3kW (in the UK that's the most you can draw from a standard mains socket anyways).

Yet more marketing bullhonky.

Furthermore there needs to be no difference between guitar and bass wiring -either will happily carry DC (ie 0Hz) and well into RF. Do not be duped.

This is all well and good, but it's fun to pull a cabinet apart on a rainy weekend afternoon and rewire it. It also gives you a chance to examine the cabinet intimately and check for vibration-prone components. My Marshall 1960A was kind of dicey, so I tightened some things, glued some things, added a support or two. The whole thing sounds tighter and clearer now.

 

[mom]

Re: internal speaker wire for a 4x12

This is all well and good, but it's fun to pull a cabinet apart on a rainy weekend afternoon and rewire it. It also gives you a chance to examine the cabinet intimately and check for vibration-prone components. My Marshall 1960A was kind of dicey, so I tightened some things, glued some things, added a support or two. The whole thing sounds tighter and clearer now.

Exactly. This was kinda the point of my post. Experimenting is fun and informative - especially when it's on the cheap. The wire cost like $5 (plus my soldering has improved considerably since I last wired the cab many years ago so all my connections are much tidier now). Even that ridiculous "matched crystal OFC with pure silver blah, blah whatever" stuff is $50 to totally rewire a 4x12. That's the price of an instrument cable or a cheap pickup. I could better understand all of this negative skepticism if my OP made it clear that I was new too all of this and I was gonna pay some tech at a music store $50+ (or however too much it would cost) to rewire my cab with a few dollars worth of wire a coupla gauges larger.