Home Depot Speaker Cables?? (1 Viewer)

[Dan Da Silva]

hey guys I have been using the speaker cables that came with my speakers for the last 6 months and they look like 16 or 18 gauge cables. I was thinking of going to home depot and picking up some of the 12 guage cable that they sell. Would you guys recommend these cables?? and if you have purchased them how much did you pay?? Also I want to buy some gold plated banana plugs from either home depot or radio shack, which do you think is better??

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[Phil A]

The Home depot stuff at $0.30/foot is not bad. If you want connectors of a little better quality but not out-of-sight cost, try www.latinternational.com at $14.95/pair.

 

[Kevin_W]

Hi Dan,
If you can feel good about cheap zip cord then the Home Depot stuff is great. I run all my speakers on it. My speakers are just not high end enough to justify the price of other more expensive cable. I bought a 250' roll for $65(ish) about year ago.
Kevin

 

[Mike OConnell]

The 12 ga wire from Home Depot is a great starting point for an upgrade in speaker wire. Great bang for the buck versus the standard 16 or 18 ga wire.
From my standpoint it produced slightly shrill highs, but was a vast improvement over the 18 ga zip cord I had used.
I have since upgraded when the whole system was moved, but was very happy with the cash value results from HD wire.
I currently use the RCA banana's that are sold at HD. They are tighted with a couple of small set screws. I feel that they do very well and when tighted I can't pull the wiere out.
In addition, I also use the locking banana's from Radio Shack, but they require soldering and a fairly hefty solding iron to generate the amount of heat required.
Mike

 

[Gerard Martin]

I must live in the high rent
district our HD 12 ga wire is
.34 a ft, but still a good buy.
I have it on one set of speakers and a 10' pair of $200 Monster
cables on another and can,t tell difference. Also found the RCA
banana plugs at HD superior to
the screw on at RS.
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Jerry

 

[Bruce N]

I got a 250' roll like Kevin_W for about $63.00. I used it for everything in my setup.
Rotel RMB-1095 (200x5) bi-wired to a pair of Def Tech BP30s and a CLR2000 in the front and single wired to a pair of BPVXs in the rear and the Fidek (300x2) running a pair of SVS 20-39s. All run with Home Depot 12 guage.
The front wire runs are over 25' each, that's 150' of wire just for the left, center and right speakers. I can't imagine paying for higher end wires for my system with those kind of wire lengths.

Bruce
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"Why do I sense we've picked up another pathetic lifeform?"

 

[JoelW]

We use all Home Depot 12 gauge speaker wire, great quality and the price is right. I've used some of Monster's more expensive cable, but I can tell absolutely no audible difference.
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Joel White
Editor CheapHomeTheater.com

 

[Ted Lee]

i'm using monster for my speaker wire, but am using rat-shack stuff for all my interconnets and banana-plugs.
btw - i'm sure there's no diff between the monster speaker wire and home-depot. i only use it because i got it before i started thinking about this stuff! coulda saved myself some money, dang-nabbit!
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You step in the stream,
But the water has moved on.
This page is not here.

 

[Clark Rozier]

Phil
Do you use these bananas for LAT? They look pretty darn good for the price. I'd be interested to hear what you have to say about these.
Gerard
I absolutely agree with you on these RCA banana plugs! And the best part, they're cheaper!!! The Radio Shack bananas are good but, I like the RCAs much better. Those from LAT are looking pretty good right now though.
Clark

 

[Phil A]

I have used a bunch of different bananas. I like the ones from LAT. Very will made for the money. For my main system where I can use bananas I have WBTs (www.wbtusa.com) which are not cheap. When I rewire my surrounds and rear speakers I will like use the ones from LAT. Their locking RCAs are not bad either especially for thicker cables.

 

[Ken Hancock]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the below quote is from LAT:

Also, most all other competitor bananas are made of brass with gold plating on top. Brass is not a very good conductor of electricity and consequently there is a preformance sacrifice.

I always learned in Chemistry/Physics that electrons only traveled on the surface of the wire. If that's the case, what does it matter what the internals are as far as conductivity goes?

 

[Chu Gai]

back to school...for the purposes of speaker cable current density within the wire will be dependent upon the frequency but any audible claims have yet to be substantiated. An inexpensive RCA or banana will be just fine. Just make sure you make a good connection and that it's snug on your equipment. No problem with having them gold coated. HD will be just fine. Then sit back and enjoy the music.

 

[Joe D]

I use them, they're great cables, especially for the money. I run about 80 feet or so of cable, and there's no way I'm paying a buck a foot for similar cable.
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Joe Dahlen
"Take hold of the flame, you've got nothing to lose, but everything to gain."

 

[Vince Bray]

I used some dayton bananas to hook up to my 3801 and they are excellent and affordable. They are solid cast metal, simple and rugged, gold plated, accept up to about 8 gauge wire and, look cool... this is the most important attribute for the rear of your system, after all

I used clear shrink wrap around them to prevent any possibility of a short. Right now I'm using bare ends at the speakers.
you can find them atwww.parts-express.com. search for "091-1260" which is the dayton part number.
Theyre 6.95 for two red and two black.