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

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Old 5th Jun 2018, 6:18 pm   #1
gramophone1
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Default Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

Hi.

I recently bought some QED 79 strand speaker cable, which is a classic speaker wire.
I think it has been around since 1978.

Going further back to Paul Voigt, and the Voigt domestic corner horn, what kind of cable would have been used way back when, and before dedicated speaker cables became available . . . . ?

Thank you for reading my post . . . .
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Old 5th Jun 2018, 6:30 pm   #2
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

Usually bell wire or similar.
The whole point of 79 strand (whether justified or not) when it came out was that it had been developed specifically for connecting loudspeakers, rather than the general-purpose stuff usually used.
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Old 5th Jun 2018, 7:02 pm   #3
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

Thanks for that . . . .

I had a look at some bell wire online, seems useable, but not really thick enough for speaker wire.
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Old 5th Jun 2018, 7:10 pm   #4
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

In the 1970s it was quite common to wire relatively-powerful hifi speakers back to their amplifiers using standard 7/029" twin and earth building-wiring cable. Plenty of copper cross-sectional area, and _relatively_ flexible.

The modern replacement - 2.5mm T&E - is somewhat less flexible and takes a bit more effort to get it to lie flat.
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Old 5th Jun 2018, 7:12 pm   #5
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

Quote:
In the 1970s it was quite common to wire relatively-powerful hifi speakers back to their amplifiers using standard 7/029" twin&earth building-wiring cable.
"Seven 0's"

Lawrence.
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Old 5th Jun 2018, 7:30 pm   #6
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

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Originally Posted by gramophone1 View Post
I had a look at some bell wire online, seems useable, but not really thick enough for speaker wire.
'Too thin' wire will mainly affect the damping factor, an influence which was becoming widely recognised just around the time when specialised cables started to emerge...
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Old 5th Jun 2018, 7:41 pm   #7
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

I think I have heard of people using lamp cord for speaker wire also . . . .

I am sure the copper used in electrical cable, will in most probability be superior quality to the copper used in cheap dedicated speaker wire.

Maybe 2 core electrical cable is all you really need . . . .
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Old 5th Jun 2018, 8:21 pm   #8
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

When I bought my Goodmans Dimension 8 ‘speakers in ‘73 (top of the range and still going strong) they came with the sort of thin flexible cable that is still sold cheaply today for that very purpose. Resembles 5A lighting flex. For the ultimate flexibility in those days the wire had a DIN ‘speaker plug at one end and a pair of spades at the other. The ‘speaker had the opposite gender connections so that the wire could be used either way round to suit your amp.
When we moved here 31 years ago I was able to lay power twin and earth under the floor and 4mm sockets on the wall at each end. Both cables measured to be the same length as that was popular at the time......
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Old 5th Jun 2018, 8:43 pm   #9
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

I remember using bell wire - good that you could bend it to hook around the feeble screw terminals that prevailed at the time but rather brittle and intransigent when you wanted to get it to lie down flat!
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Old 5th Jun 2018, 8:54 pm   #10
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

It is interesting that bell wire would have been used then. It is so thin a cable, only able to carry one amp of current (I have no idea how many amps a speaker would use) that the sound from the speakers must have been compromised.
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Old 5th Jun 2018, 8:59 pm   #11
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

Much lower powers then... and you could wire it with drawing pins.
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Old 5th Jun 2018, 9:00 pm   #12
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

I understand from a project at work about 8 years ago, that Cat5 cable was being used in Australia for home entertainment systems, including using pairs in parallel for speakers.
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Old 5th Jun 2018, 9:19 pm   #13
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

QED are a well known British Brand of speaker cables, yet they are not made in the UK.
They are designed in the UK, made in China . . . .

Is anything HiFi still made in the UK ?

China seems to be the go-to place for everything, and anything HiFi related . . . .

Interesting to know if quality is compromised . . . .
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Old 5th Jun 2018, 9:56 pm   #14
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

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Originally Posted by gramophone1 View Post
It is interesting that bell wire would have been used then. It is so thin a cable, only able to carry one amp of current (I have no idea how many amps a speaker would use) that the sound from the speakers must have been compromised.
It's pretty thick compared with the fine wire that is used to wind the speaker's voice coil, and the same current has to pass through that (once the crossover's sorted it out into treble, mid and bass as required) .

If we want to be quantitative about it, there's some advantage to be had in keeping the resistance of the speaker lead down to about 10% or so of the speaker's impedance. The resistance of the voicecoils and any crossover components means that going beyond that makes hardly any further improvement.

I've heard it said that 'damping factor' became a popular point of discussion when the high levels of feedback needed to linearise early transistor amplifiers produced low output impedance as a side-effect. The marketing men latched onto it as something they could bamboozle customers with. The unfortunate reality of the speaker components' resistance was quietly swept under the carpet ...

It's also worth remembering that source impedance, which includes the lead resistance, may have a more audible effect via its simple impact on the voltage at the speaker. The perfect speaker will have an acoustic output for a given applied voltage which varies as little as possible with frequency. As long as the source can supply the same voltage at all frequencies it won't matter if the speaker's impedance varies, which it always does. But if the source has a simple resistance in series with it, i.e. the lead, then variations in the speaker impedance will cause corresponding variations in the voltage at the speaker terminals and, therefore, variations in the acoustic output.

Cheers,

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Old 5th Jun 2018, 10:04 pm   #15
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

Quote:
Originally Posted by gramophone1 View Post
QED are a well known British Brand of speaker cables, yet they are not made in the UK.
They are designed in the UK, made in China . . . .
Given the serious lack of copper-mines in the UK, I think you'd find it rather hard to produce speaker-cable (or any other cable) that was entirely UK-sourced....

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...per_production for a list of countries involved in copper-production.
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Old 5th Jun 2018, 10:26 pm   #16
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

That is a good point. I did not even consider the lack of copper mines.
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Old 5th Jun 2018, 10:33 pm   #17
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

Hi GrimJosef.

Thank you for your insightful post

I i am tempted to try bell wire, as an experiment, to satisfy my curiosity . . . .

Bell wire is cheap enough. My own solid state amplifier is 50 watts. Not massive power.
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Old 5th Jun 2018, 11:28 pm   #18
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

Bell wire is much unappreciated stuff. Dad always used it for extension speakers we had in other rooms in the days before we had cheap transistor portables. My boss at Plessey once mentioned that when he was working at Belling-Lee's in the mid-1950's, they found that bell wire gave a much sharper picture than the low loss coax they had developed for the then-new Band III ITV service. Mismatch at both ends caused the receiver to respond to multiple delayed signals with the coax, whereas the bell wire had such high attenuation that only the original incoming signal was strong enough for the receiver to detect. Embarrasingly for them, they only found this out when demonstrating the coax to a director who, not understanding stuff like decibels, asked them how it compared with bell wire.

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Old 6th Jun 2018, 8:32 am   #19
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

Great to see that this thread has not gone down the "bell wire is rubbish, expensive cables are the best" road. Out of the now many crazy beliefs and foibles that strangle (keep afloat?!) the hifi industry, the speaker cable one is my pet hate. I also hang out on the odd hifi forum and it's amazing how so many so called audiophiles waffle on about how one expensive cable is better than another, usually with an explanation that includes references to an "improved sound stage", "more detail" and "more air". Forgive them for they know not what they do..
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Old 6th Jun 2018, 9:40 am   #20
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Default Re: Speaker Cable of Yesteryear

I`m not sure about the Voigt Corner Horn but most older speakers with any quality pretensions were 15 ohm impedance which will greatly reduce speaker cable effects compared with modern 4 ohm types.

I think Voigt used a SET amplifier which would have had a much poorer damping factor than most modern amplifiers so again, less cable effect
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