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Vintage Audio (record players, hi-fi etc) Amplifiers, speakers, gramophones and other audio equipment.

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Old 6th Jun 2018, 11:27 pm   #61
Station X
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

No multi stranded speaker wire in my house. It's bell wire in one room and two core mains flex in the other.
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Old 7th Jun 2018, 7:43 am   #62
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

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Just curious. If bell wire was used for the speakers. What was used as phono cables ?

Thank You . . . .
Ordinary TV coax was often used for inputs, and a lot of gear used standard Belling-Lee sockets too.
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Old 7th Jun 2018, 8:09 am   #63
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

Ordinary mains cable is as good for speakers as anything else. Speaker cable probably is the least likely component in the system to introduce any degradation, compared to what's immediately up- and downstream of it .....
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Old 7th Jun 2018, 8:12 am   #64
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

I just use 2.5mm 32 strand equipment wire - because I had it. Works fine.

Greatly disappointed the salesman when I bought my kit
- "you`ll be needing some speaker cables?"
- "No, I`ve got plenty of wire thanks"
- "But you need proper cable - It`s silver plated because all the signal travels on the outside of the cable"...../
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Old 7th Jun 2018, 8:37 am   #65
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

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Quote:
Originally Posted by gramophone1 View Post
Just curious. If bell wire was used for the speakers. What was used as phono cables ?

Thank You . . . .
Ordinary TV coax was often used for inputs, and a lot of gear used standard Belling-Lee sockets too.
And quite a lot of equipment had a single octal plug/socket linking preamp to power amp. Up the cable went the heaters and HT supplies to the preamp, down the cable went the audio, on a bit of shielded wire. All in the same outer jacket.

Tuners were often powered the same way, tapped off the preamp power feed.

Tape recorders used quarter inch jacks and screened wire.

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Old 7th Jun 2018, 12:00 pm   #66
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

The power and signal interconnection needed to be watched, too, particularly with the likes of octal umbilicals, with possible shortcomings including introduced hum loops and the alternative of subsidiary items potentially floating to HT when folk tried removing commoning connections....

I never really liked the Quad (as an example) power daisy-chain set-up- anyone who's worked on power supplies knows that only a slight extra HT current can make for substantial extra transformer dissipation, hence lots of Quad II power amps with weary transformers. To be fair, it kept the cost of what were then pricey items down, and I think that there was a tax fudge that favoured kit with separate PSU arrangements.
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Old 7th Jun 2018, 12:21 pm   #67
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

Around 10 years ago when I bought my first proper hifi I went to richer sounds and bought a Cambridge audio amp and speakers etc. A lovely sounding amp and I still use it.

I didn't have a clue back then except I wanted nice sound, and when it came to speaker cable I remember the sales guy tailoring it to the kind of music I listened to (mostly rock/metal at the time). He says "Well in that case I imagine you want a fairly neutral sound, not too much bass", I said yes I suppose. "Well I'd recommend our silver cable, its very neutral and gives you crisp clarity on the mids". I bought the cable and spent way too much

It was nice and chunky and looked very nice. I remember my dad laughing at it and telling me how in his sound engineering days they used whatever was around, even bell wire. A few years later when I started to take an interest in electronics I realised it was complete nonsense and I'd wasted that money

When I moved home and the old cable didn't reach, I stuck in some cheapy stranded speaker cable I got from a budget hardware store, sounds the same to me !
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Old 7th Jun 2018, 12:48 pm   #68
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This caught my eye: https://www.screwfix.com/p/philex-sp...0m-white/90735

The specs are a bit vague, but at that price you could risk it - it could have plenty of other uses if it's too thin for your speakers.
I took a look at that link - looks good. It struck me that if it didn't work out for loudspeaker, you could use it for - oooh, I dunno - wiring up an electric door bell?

I've mentioned before on here that I once used to set undergrad students (perhaps those who were less keen on the maths inherent in a 'real' project) the task of setting up listening tests of bell wire vs posh speaker cable in an IEC-spec listening room. Some even did some proper stats (ANOVA etc) on the results from their test panels. No findings of significance were ever noted!
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Old 7th Jun 2018, 12:53 pm   #69
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

I am 42 and been in to hifi since my teens, and seen a ton of kit pass through my system over the years.
Yet amazingly the only component connections I have come across are humble rca connections for hifi. Never used balanced connections, and I have never heard of octal plug/sockets or belling lee sockets.
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Old 7th Jun 2018, 1:23 pm   #70
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

I was lucky an old friend of mine let me have some off-cuts of cable from when he fitted his car with new speakers over 2 years ago.
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Old 7th Jun 2018, 3:06 pm   #71
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I am 42 and been in to hifi since my teens, and seen a ton of kit pass through my system over the years.
Yet amazingly the only component connections I have come across are humble rca connections for hifi. Never used balanced connections, and I have never heard of octal plug/sockets or belling lee sockets.
Before phono plugs it was (often 5-pin, 180 deg pin layout) DIN plugs. Before that, as folks say belling-lee sometimes (TV aerial plug), which is also common for audio-freq connections on test and measurement kit which predates the widespread adoption of BNC terminals. Unless it's Bruel & Kjaer, in which case they did their own thing and charged accordingly!

ETA - I'm only 47; my former employers hung on to a lot of rather aged measurement gear!
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Old 7th Jun 2018, 3:08 pm   #72
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

I have purchased some Masterplug 16 gauge Speaker Cable.
Should be fine . . . . All I need really . . . .
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Old 7th Jun 2018, 4:44 pm   #73
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

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Originally Posted by gramophone1 View Post
I am 42 and been in to hifi since my teens, and seen a ton of kit pass through my system over the years.
Yet amazingly the only component connections I have come across are humble rca connections for hifi. Never used balanced connections, and I have never heard of octal plug/sockets or belling lee sockets.
Tripletone used Belling Lee (TV aerial) plugs and sockets back in the day. Still plugged into the back of my little stereo integrated EL84 one from ca 1960. I always rather liked them as connectors.
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Old 7th Jun 2018, 6:03 pm   #74
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

I think the RCA/phono plug is older than the DIN audio plug.

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Old 7th Jun 2018, 6:14 pm   #75
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

1940s if Wikipedia is to be believed and DIN was standardised in the early 70s (I would have thought a bit earlier than that - maybe because they are such miserable things, they feel like they have been around a lot longer!)
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Old 7th Jun 2018, 7:28 pm   #76
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

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Originally Posted by mhennessy
For pro sound installations I've seen much thinner cable carrying much louder signals over much longer distances. I wouldn't like to say the wire makes no difference at all, but there are certainly much more significant contributing factors to the sound you hear in a studio or theatre
Quote:
Originally Posted by mhennessy
50 watts equates to an RMS voltage of 20V and an RMS current of 2.5A. With real music (not a sine wave), these levels will rarely, if ever be seen. So I wouldn't worry too much on power grounds - I've seen 400W amplifiers drive PA speakers via 100 metres of 0.75mm-squared mains flex before! The total series resistance - which depends on the cross-sectional area and cable length - might make a slight difference to the overall response, but it might not necessarily be unpleasant - it just depends on your speakers.
The development, over the last decade, of reliable lightweight switching audio amplifiers and advanced DSP has made quite a difference. Most of the really high powered speaker systems (as used for festivals and touring shows) now have self-contained amplification and processing. Consequently the speaker cables have negligible length.

I've just rummaged in a filing cabinet and dug out some of my system notes from the 1990's.

Back in the day, we would generally use a combination of 5, 10 and 20m lengths of 2.5 mm2 speaker cables, often in 8-way multicores. Amplifiers would be in heavy racks that stayed at ground level, with the speakers either stacked on towers or flown (suspended) overhead.

One extreme example was the Royal Albert Hall, where the speaker cluster has to be flown very high to enable proper coverage of the room. Cable runs would be either 40 or 20m depending on whether the amplifier racks for the flown cluster went on the floor backstage or at the SL end of the gallery.
The speakers were run 4-way active* and around 40 circuits were required. Each amplifier channel would be loaded with anything between 2.5 and 8 ohms worth of speakers depending on which bit of the system it was driving. Channel output power ratings were usually around 800w @ 4 / 500W @ 8 ohms but the high crest factor of music signals meant that some were just ticking over for much of the time.

Damping factor? What damping factor?

* that means separate drive for Low, Low-mid, High-mid, and HF speakers, with an electronic crossover splitting the frequencies before the power amplifiers.

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Old 7th Jun 2018, 10:56 pm   #77
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

Further to previous comments, in my experience the advantage of Bell Wire is it's ability to be unobtrusive and it's ok generally-something always gets through but it's not like squeezing a hose pipe-it's more than adequate. I've said many times that listening is a psycological experience not just a graph!
I do tend to use something more substantial [belt and braces] it's true but often it would be mains rated stuff re-cycled which is very much available for so called "Hi Fi" or whatever, as it's substantial but not required to carry anything at all like it's rated load-a win win surely! The other stuff is a case of the "Emperors New Clothes"

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Old 7th Jun 2018, 11:44 pm   #78
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

I have noticed bell wire is not stranded copper but solid core.

Does this make it harder to work with ?

Thank you . . . .
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Old 7th Jun 2018, 11:57 pm   #79
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I fished a pair of Philips mini system speakers out of a skip and I'm glad I did because they're very good for what they are. They're on my bedroom system. They have fixed cables and they're wired with what is essentially bell wire except it's red and black.

My first thought when initially inspecting them before I'd heard them was to rewire them internally with something like 5 amp mains cable and fit terminal plates to the back. I was going to connect them to the amp with more 5 amp mains but they sound good enough for me not to bother. They're not exactly hi fi strictly speaking but as unlikely as the cable on them looks they're more than good enough for playing FM radio and CD's at moderate volume in my room.

Occasionally I've played them loud and they start to get flustered and compress audibly at any level you'd have to shout over. I suspect this is down to a combination of the cable and the fact that the bass cones are only 4", albeit supplemented by a 5.25" auxiliary bass radiator. The sound becomes somewhat "shouty" once the output of the bass speakers overtakes the output from the ABR, such as it is.

For a bedroom system they're ok, they have obvious limitations but within those, they're fine for now I use them. I don't think I'd use such thin cable on a "serious" system though.

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Old 8th Jun 2018, 12:06 am   #80
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

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I have noticed bell wire is not stranded copper but solid core.

Does this make it harder to work with ?

Thank you . . . .
Yes - the bell wire I remember was solid core, which meant it was difficult to get to lie down flat. Also. in its original role, people fitted bell pushes to doors (which opened and closed) causing the core to work-harden and crack inside the insulation.
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