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Topic: Copper wire to point of cable plug? |
Tom Campbell
From:
Houston, Texas, USA
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Posted 17 Nov 2021 5:43 am |
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I have a 1/4 "speaker cable plug that has the copper wire connected to the shaft of the plug. The silver (alum) wire is connect to the point of the plug.
I thought the wire connections were suppose to be the reverse of this...or doesn't it matter?
This cable is connecting a amp head to the speaker cabinet. |
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Ian Rae
From:
Redditch, England
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Posted 17 Nov 2021 6:38 am
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It doesn't matter unless the speaker needs to be in phase with something else.
_________________
Make sleeping dogs tell the truth!
Homebuilt keyless U12 7x5, Excel keyless U12 8x8, Williams keyless U12 7x8, Telonics rack and 15" cabs |
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Tom Campbell
From:
Houston, Texas, USA
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Posted 17 Nov 2021 10:26 am
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| Thanks Ian! |
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Jeff Highland
From:
New South Wales, Australia
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Posted 17 Nov 2021 11:20 am
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As long as both ends are connected the same it will make no difference
_________________
Duesenberg Fairytale
1949 Supro Supreme
1950 National New Yorker
2008 Highland Baritone Weissenborn
2020 Highland New Yorker.
2020 Highland Mohan Veena
2021 Highland Weissencone |
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J Fletcher
From:
London,Ont,Canada
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Posted 17 Nov 2021 2:55 pm
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| Just curious, but what type of cable has a copper conductor, and an aluminum conductor . |
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Jerry Overstreet
From:
Louisville Ky
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Posted 17 Nov 2021 3:02 pm
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| Many speaker cable leads are color coded silver and gold just so you can maintain continuity/polarity to ea. plug contact. It doesn't matter which one goes where as stated earlier. |
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Ken Fox
From:
Nashville GA USA
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Posted 18 Nov 2021 7:06 am Wire
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| Sounds like guitar cable. Not good for speakers at all. |
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ajm
From:
Los Angeles
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Posted 18 Nov 2021 7:21 am
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Speaker cable, guitar cable.......It sounds like we really don't know what it is.
You might want to post a couple of pictures. |
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Tom Campbell
From:
Houston, Texas, USA
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Posted 18 Nov 2021 7:24 am
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| The cable is a clear double-strand and appears to be 14 or 16 gauge wire. It has the 1/4" plug on one end and the other end has alligator clips. Using it mainly for testing speakers. |
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Ken Fox
From:
Nashville GA USA
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Posted 18 Nov 2021 7:25 am
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From a site by Fender:
Guitar cables and speaker cables are two different kinds of cable designed for two very different purposes. Using one in place of the other can have unpleasant effects ranging from merely annoying interference to outright equipment failure.
Among novices and those in a hurry, confusion sometimes arises from the fact that both kinds of cable often share the same kind of connector—1/4″ phone plugs. That’s about the only important similarity, though. To understand why you shouldn’t use one in place of the other, let’s look at both cable types and examine their purpose and differences in more detail.
Your instrument cable is low power and high impedance. It’s built to convey a weak unamplified signal from your guitar to your amp, where it’s boosted up to a useable level. Since it doesn’t need to carry a lot of juice — a small DC current with a small voltage — it consists of a single small-diameter “positive†inner wire (usually 24 gauge) running through a braided shield conductor that works as the ground connection, plus various insulators and the outer jacket. Its small, lightweight wire size is good for cable flexibility (it needs to follow you around onstage, remember), and the shielding prevents much of the noisy external electromagnetic interference that low-power signals are susceptible to.
Your speaker cable, on the other hand, is just the opposite — high power and low impedance. It’s built to carry a strong signal from your amp to your speakers—a relatively high AC current and voltage. Unlike the instrument cable, it has not one but two wire conductors, both with a relatively large diameter in order to allow greater signal flow from amp to speakers.
It’s useful here to imagine the current flow from amp to speakers as water pumped through pipes. The amp puts out whatever “water pressure†it’s capable of (and it’s a lot), and your speaker cable is the pipe that carries that water pressure to the speakers. If you reduce the size of that pipe, you restrict the flow of water to the other end. Speaker wires work much the same way—smaller-diameter wires present more electrical resistance to the signal flow, wasting energy in the form of heat. The bigger the wires, the better the signal flow from amp to speakers.
If you use an instrument cable as a speaker cable, you’re probably OK at low signal levels. At high signal levels, though, trouble brews—all that amp power attempts to flow through the instrument cable’s too-small conductor. The unhappy result is that a lot of amp power is converted to heat and never even reaches the speakers. You get reduced speaker output, some probable distortion and, in extreme situations, heat-induced cable or cable connector failure. And you definitely don’t want your amp overheating.
If you use a speaker cable as an instrument cable, the large conductors handle the weak signal just great. But there’s a catch—speaker cables aren’t shielded. Since they normally carry strong, already-amplified signals, any noise they pick up is inconsequential, making shielding unnecessary. If used as an instrument cable though, the unshielded conductors can pick up interference from fluorescent lighting, amp power supplies and various other external AC sources.
From the time it’s created at your pickups to the time it enters the amp’s input, the low-level signal from your instrument must travel through a conductor shielded from interference along the entire length of the cable, but that’s not what’s happening if you use a speaker cable. The low-frequency humming or buzzing you’ll consequently hear is the 60-cycle frequency of U.S. AC power leaking through the unshielded cable, internal guitar wiring, amp wiring or any combination thereof. And your amp is boosting it all to the point of sounding like giant mutant bees. |
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Richard Sinkler
From:
aka: Rusty Strings -- Missoula, Montana
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Posted 18 Nov 2021 8:17 am
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| Tom Campbell wrote: |
| The cable is a clear double-strand and appears to be 14 or 16 gauge wire. It has the 1/4" plug on one end and the other end has alligator clips. Using it mainly for testing speakers. |
Sounds like lamp cord which is fine for speaker cable.
_________________
Carter D10 8p/8k, Dekley S10 3p/4k C6 setup,Regal RD40 Dobro, NV400, NV112 . Playing for 54 years and still counting. |
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Dave Mudgett
From:
Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee
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Posted 18 Nov 2021 9:33 am
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| Tom Campbell wrote: |
| The cable is a clear double-strand and appears to be 14 or 16 gauge wire. It has the 1/4" plug on one end and the other end has alligator clips. Using it mainly for testing speakers. |
OK, unshielded, side-by-side 2-conductor 14 or 16 gauge wire is not an instrument cable. Maybe the 'alum' looking wire isn't actually aluminum - maybe painted? I dunno. But I would not use a speaker cable with an aluminum conductor - and certainly not with a high-power amp. |
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Tom Campbell
From:
Houston, Texas, USA
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Posted 18 Nov 2021 10:23 am
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| Aluminum was used only as a description for color. I probaby should have used "silver"! |
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Steven Paris
From:
Los Angeles
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Posted 19 Nov 2021 2:59 pm
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"Your instrument cable is low power and high impedance. It’s built to convey a weak unamplified signal from your guitar to your amp, where it’s boosted up to a useable level. Since it doesn’t need to carry a lot of juice — a small DC current with a small voltage...."
This is a typo....should be AC current.
_________________
Emmons & Peavey |
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Donny Hinson
From:
Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.
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Posted 19 Nov 2021 7:50 pm
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| Many 2-conductor cables have a silver colored conductor (tinned copper) and a bare copper conductor. That's so you can identify (polarize) them if required. In most cases, the silver colored wire is designated positive, and the bare copper wire is negative. In reality, the polarization doesn't matter for speaker wires except when multiple speakers are close together, or mounted in the same enclosure. |
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