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After having success making my own instrument cable I decided to replace the ratty old speaker cable for my head/cab. I decided to go all mojotastic and get a few feet of EA Siren.
Once stripped back there are actually 6 smaller wires inside, 3 black 3 white. I assume I strip all of those back and twist them into two strands (all white wire / all black wire) ...and does it matter which goes to tip/sleeve?
...and what's all this junk about direction cable? There was an arrow on the cable, is that end intended to go to the cab? and why the fuck does that matter?
You can literally use a lamp cord for a speaker cable and it'll hardly matter. Although, there is some advantage to having multiple wires twisted together. Dunno if a simple guitar amp would see the benefits, since I think you need two reverse-phased signals going through them for it to work.
As for directional cable... that's one of those technologies invented by salesmen instead of engineers. What it means in guitar cables is that the shield is connected to ground at the amp side, and not the guitar side. Thus, shorter path to ground. Since speaker cables don't have shields, I can't think of what it could possibly mean.
This doesn't sound right to me, I don't know what siren cable is but speaker cable is usually just too isolated wires, no grounding. Like lamp power cord.
I'm pretty sure winging it ain't a great idea when it comes to speaker cable, is the siren stuff meat to be used for speakers? is there no resources on the net that tell you what to do?
He was already correct. Just use one colour for each conductor.
I looked up the cable. They use solid core wire because it allegedly allows more high end clarity, and twist several of those cables together to avoid skin effect issues.
I can hear a difference, though that probably has to do more with the new mogami cables I just made. Guitar is a bit more clear, with a load more mids. I can tell because my cleans sound totally different. I had to dial in a more aggressive mid scoop to get blackface cleans.
I don't expect the speaker cable to have much a difference tonally, but the cable feels solid/will last a long time and was about the same price in materials as some pre-assembled no name GC cable.
I'll report in after the "break-in"
"Cables sound best after carrying a signal for approximately 40 hours. This is due to dielectric forming. As the conductor’s insulation material stores and releases an electric signal, its molecular characteristics stabilize with regard to how they store and release the energy applied by the conductor. Expect any cable to sound its best only after passing a signal for 40 hours. Note that (approximately) 80% of the change occurs during the first 10 hours a signal is presented to the dielectric. Don’t expect too much after that."
I made some speaker cable from an ancient vacuum cleaner power cord. Stuff is awesome. Hardest part was getting the cable through the plug housing.
"Cables sound best after carrying a signal for approximately 40 hours. This is due to dielectric forming. As the conductor’s insulation material stores and releases an electric signal, its molecular characteristics stabilize with regard to how they store and release the energy applied by the conductor. Expect any cable to sound its best only after passing a signal for 40 hours. Note that (approximately) 80% of the change occurs during the first 10 hours a signal is presented to the dielectric. Don’t expect too much after that."
So, now you know that the guys who write the technobabble bits in Star Trek moonlight as copy writers for corksniffer audio gear.
Good deals done with all these guys Canada, we put the "u" in satire
