Heresy internal wiring...

[hap]

I am terribly deficient in physics, especially anything electrical. Therefore, I am seeking input as to the feasibility and practicality of two ideas I have for rewiring my H700 Heresys.

Can I use my left over 14 awg speaker wire (amp->speaker) for the internal wiring and can I connect my speaker wire (amp->speaker) directly to the crossover?

To my admitedly ignorant mind having all the wiring associated with the speakers to be the same brand/type would add to the seamlessness/smoothness of the resulting sound.

Problems I think I see: resistance between tweeter/x-over, sqwaker/x-over and bass/x-over. I could easily double the wiring from bass to x-over and half the wiring from tweeter to x-over.

Any enlightenment, education, opinions and suggestions will be appreciated.

Many thanks.

[moray james]

When I first opened my Forte ll I found a rats nest of parallel wires. I straighened out the bundle and twisted each of the pairs of the driver wires. A twisted pair will sound better and will minimize RF pick up of the cable. Why don't you try this first and see if you like what you hear? If you want you can bump the gage to say 14 gage and twist those wires as well. going much larger than 14 gage is just going to become problematic with respect to the install. Your house wire is 14 gage solid core and is good for 15 amps. That's more than you are going to pump into your Heresy speakers.You will probably have to cut off enough strands on the 14 gage set (at the crossover board end) to insure that they will comfortably fit into the holes on your circuit board. Don't worry about this increasing the DCR of the wires as it is only for a very short distance and will have almost no effect on DCR.

I am not sure I understand what you are referring to with respect to seeing resistance and then suggesting to use half the wire (size) to the mid and tweeter? You should use the same gage wire to each of the drivers. You could use your left over speaker wire but the jacket is just not necessary for an internal install like this. Use crimp on connectors at the drivers like you have now, you can solder the crimps if you like just make sure you don't run solder into the connectors. Use a bare copper stranded wire, PVC insulation is fine. The finer the strands of the wire the more flexible the wire will be. You don't have to go nuts here standard hook up wire in the gage you want is fine just twist it into pairs. Hope that this helps. Best regards Moray James.

[WMcD]

I don't see any reason for heavy wire. Apparently Paul Klipsch did not either.

One time I started using Monster Wire for internal wiring on a speaker project. I quickly found out that it was a pain in the neck to work with. It is difficult to solder to the relatively small connectors on the speakers. Also just the wieight of it can cause force on the connections which I didn't like.

PWK had commented on people who are enamored with thick gauge wiring for internal connections -- which run for a length of foot or so.. The people just fail to realize that these wires are feeding voice coils in the speakers which are far longer and thinner.

On a technical side, the foot-long or so hook up wire -- probably 22 gauge -- has negligible resistance. For purposes of discussion, call it 0.01 ohms. It does no good to use thick wire. For purposes of discussion, call it 0.001 ohms. This is because, as PWK alludes to, the voice coil has a resistance of about 8 ohms. Therefore, consider the series resistance, which adds. You're changing 8.01 ohms to 8.001.ohms. That is nothing.

People debate over whether thick wires for the the longer runs of speaker wire make a big difference. The rational viewpoint is that you might want to avoid losses and the so called damping factor. But the short runs inside the speaker is not going to alter that equation.

There is the ongoing notion that even a magnificent manufacturer like Klipsch has a budget and price points and must have scrimped on internal wire size. And this feeds the next notion that replacing internal wiring with something bigger will enhance performance. I can't agree with these.

PWK had said -- in a general sense -- that if he thought tweeks would make his speakers better, he would do it. I see somewhat bigger internal wire as a no cost tweek in the scheme of things and so there was no price point or budget issue.

There were some instances in history where the Klipsch "Inc." was advertising that it used Monster Wire and even silver solder on "critical high frequency connections." In my view, the marketing department did this without any technical justification.

WMcD