A really dumb and simple speaker wire question (1 Viewer)

[JustinCleveland]

I just picked up a few feet of 12 ga wire from Home Depot and started connecting when I realized, I don't know how to properly attach the cables...

On the back of my speakers there are red and black connectors. half the wire is brown, the other half has grey streaks in it. Which side should I put in which connector?

 

[Lee Carbray]

It does not matter just make sure it matches up the same at both ends. For example brown to black at the speaker and brown to black at the receiver.

 

[Bob McElfresh]

The 2 wires in the speaker wire are identical. The strips are to let you be consistant.

Think of the black connector as "ground" and the red connector as "positive". (This is not really what they are, but this is a model.)

Connect all 5 wires with the stripes to the RED connector, and the plain wire to the BLACK behind your receiver.

Do the same behind your speakers. Some speakers have "+/0" symbols. The "+" is for the stripe, the "-" is for the plain wire.

Red/+ = stripe wire
Black/- = solid wire

NOTE: it will not damage anything to hook these up backwards/flipped. It will just make the sound go out-of-phase.

What WILL cause damage are small strands of copper poking out from a less-than-neat wire job. These can cause shorts later.

I like the dual-bananas (2xx-308) from Radio Shack if your speakers have binding posts with the same spacing. If not, the single bananas work fine (2xx-306) or if you have the spring-clips, the pin connectors (2xx-309) work well.

These all make it easy to connect without messy wires sticking out.

Hope this helps.