Hook-up Wires

[Bombacaototal]

What issues would I be facing on the teflon stranded cables if there are small nicks on the outside stranded wires (conductor). I've haven't been extra careful as in checking with magnifying glass and so forth

[R.G.]

Sorry RG, but - with due respect - if you are that much careless when stripping your cables, you should have cut several elements of a stranded cable, which IS - NOT will, may, might or can ... be - a problem, & also may/might/... lead to bigger troubles.

Also, a few turns/angles (sorry for my poor english) alleviate the constraints upon the connectors.

Your English is just fine. I respect your ability to do technical work in a non-native language.

As Mark said, even with some care bladed wire strippers leave small nicks on copper wire. Copper hookup wire is quite soft, and even careful use will put small cuts in the surface. These don't have to be big or deep to cause problems. Worse yet, small cuts are right at the edge of the insulation where it is very difficult to see them if they're small.

All metals harden if you flex them many times. They harden most where they flex the most, and any sudden change in support or diameter of a wire makes it flex and work harden most right at the change. This means both that copper wire gets harder and more brittle right at any nicks in the wire, and that as you note, a few bends, turns and angles are good for making less stress on the wires. Same idea - flex less, or over a much longer length of wire, and the wire gets less work-hardened. Once the wire is hardened by flexing, it starts acting brittle. Remember how we "cut" glass? We don't cut it at all. We just make a small, sharply cut line in the surface of the glass, and then flex the glass so it pulls on that line. The glass snaps right at the line.

You're right that the bigger the nick or cut into the wire, the sooner it will break. Careful use of strippers will keep the nicks and cuts small enough to let the wires last a long time. The thing I mentioned about thermal wire strippers is that they produce no nicks at all. Some military equipment and NASA space equipment specifies that all wires must be stripped with either thermal wire strippers or solvent that dissolves the insulation entirely for just this reason - no nicks or cuts at all is better than small ones.

[Stevem]

There's a better proibility of a Tornado ripping thru a junk yard and end up building a 747 then hearing a difference in a guitar amp due to the wire used!!!

[R.G.]

You're absolutely correct - but I get chewed on if I say that something is impossible. So ... it's unlikely.

[FourT6and2]

Audible difference? I doubt it.

But I prefer stranded PTFE. Doesn't melt. Comes in cooler, brighter, more vidid colors. And the jacket is thinner compared to PVC of the same wire gauge, so it takes up less space and it's easier to route. Although stranded does not hold its shape as well as solid.

Other than that, whatever. It's wire. And we're talking about guitar amps here, not lab equipment.

[Charlie Wilson]

Hmmm, has anyone actually listened to the difference between PVC and Teflon or is this all theory based on what you should or shouldn't be able to hear. I play music with my guitar not a calculator. I have also built and rebuilt the same amp first with Teflon and then with PVC. The Teflon is brighter than the PCV. There I said it.
CW

[R.G.]

Charlie, I very much respect your ears, and your experience.

But I'll buy you a case of beer if you can determine by listening whether sound has come through a PVC-insulated wire versus a teflon-insulated wire. I get to design the experiment.

[Charlie Wilson]

OK R.G., I'm in. A Teflon vs PVC wire throwdown.
CW

[Mark]

Bring it on!

[Bombacaototal]

Looking forward to it!

[tubeswell]

I don't like solid core wire, primarily because vibration can cause stress cracks. It is nice that it stays where you put it better, but you need to use something like a thermal wire stripper to strip insulation off the ends. If you use bladed strippers, they nearly always leave a nick on the wire surface right where the blades cut through the insulation.

And then there's push-back insulation - no strippers needed.

[cpk313]

OK, I have a lot of experience with wire...but in the world of highend audio not guitar amp building so your mileage will vary. How and if my experience is applicable to guitar amps I'm sure is debatable.

These are general observations but have been made from first hand experience after many, many hours of R&D time spent in front of a well setup 2 channel rig.

Solid core wire tends to be more focused then stranded all things being equal. The higher the strand count for the same gauge the, for lack of a better term, softer the sound is. Dielectric effects sound, Teflon is peaky in the lower treble, fine with a pure copper conductor but silver and silver plated copper, my least favorite, tends to by overly bright. If you want bright then silver plated copper mil-spec with PTFE maybe the way to go but you may end up with a sound that is sterile. PVC has a pretty high dielectric constant which is bad in highend audio for anything carrying signal but if you have an amp that is/maybe/you are concerned will be bright, PVC insulated wire won't exacerbate the problem. Solid silver has the most potential but is the most difficult to get a balanced presentation from. Typically silver is Teflon insulated making it very bright but it's detail retrieval can be staggering. Not sure that anybody would opt for wiring up their amp with silver but if they did polyethylene insulation might be a better choice. When I put new pots/switches/pups in my G&L I used silver because I had some extra on hand and wanted the neck pickup to be a clear as possible. Did it make a difference, I don't know, I switched so many things at the same time but it didn't hurt.

I'm in the process of building my first amp and have some very nice high quality stranded copper wire with polyethylene insulation that I am planning on using for it. Does wire make or break a guitar amp's sound, I have no clue, but all wire doesn't sound the same.

[Bombacaototal]

OK, I have a lot of experience with wire...but in the world of highend audio not guitar amp building so your mileage will vary. How and if my experience is applicable to guitar amps I'm sure is debatable.

These are general observations but have been made from first hand experience after many, many hours of R&D time spent in front of a well setup 2 channel rig.

Solid core wire tends to be more focused then stranded all things being equal. The higher the strand count for the same gauge the, for lack of a better term, softer the sound is. Dielectric effects sound, Teflon is peaky in the lower treble, fine with a pure copper conductor but silver and silver plated copper, my least favorite, tends to by overly bright. If you want bright then silver plated copper mil-spec with PTFE maybe the way to go but you may end up with a sound that is sterile. PVC has a pretty high dielectric constant which is bad in highend audio for anything carrying signal but if you have an amp that is/maybe/you are concerned will be bright, PVC insulated wire won't exacerbate the problem. Solid silver has the most potential but is the most difficult to get a balanced presentation from. Typically silver is Teflon insulated making it very bright but it's detail retrieval can be staggering. Not sure that anybody would opt for wiring up their amp with silver but if they did polyethylene insulation might be a better choice. When I put new pots/switches/pups in my G&L I used silver because I had some extra on hand and wanted the neck pickup to be a clear as possible. Did it make a difference, I don't know, I switched so many things at the same time but it didn't hurt.

I'm in the process of building my first amp and have some very nice high quality stranded copper wire with polyethylene insulation that I am planning on using for it. Does wire make or break a guitar amp's sound, I have no clue, but all wire doesn't sound the same.

Very insightful and thanks for sharing. I am building an amp with your least favourite, a PTFE mil-spec, 1.5mm thick, silver-plated copper core conductor with 19 strands, 1000V, 14A. I choose it because I thought it might be more HI-FI ish (a tad brigther) given I am expecting this specific amp to be a bit on the dark side. Hopefully it won't be overly bright, brittle or sterile. I will report back once it is done.

What brand/part number are you using on the high quality stranded copper wire with polyethylene insulation? I'd love to try these on the next amp

[R.G.]

OK, I have a lot of experience with wire...but in the world of highend audio not guitar amp building so your mileage will vary. How and if my experience is applicable to guitar amps I'm sure is debatable.

Sigh.
Humans have an almost infinite capacity for self deception - this is, in fact, something that has been measured by smart folks who make it their business to study the human brain and how it acts. I'm sure that YOUR brain is not deceiving itself, but most other people do.

Solid core wire tends to be more focused then stranded all things being equal.

As William Jefferson Clinton remarked, it all depends on what your definition of "is" is.
Can you describe what you mean by "focused" there? Is there any way to measure "focus" in a way that is not completely dependent on subjective opinion, which - in other people, not you - is subject to the foibles of human self deception based on what they have been told is The Way And The Truth?

The higher the strand count for the same gauge the, for lack of a better term, softer the sound is. Dielectric effects sound, Teflon is peaky in the lower treble, fine with a pure copper conductor but silver and silver plated copper, my least favorite, tends to by overly bright.

Human hearing has been the subject of a very great deal of measurement and evaluation. In particular, the smallest differences in sound level that can reliably be heard has been beaten on - a lot. The human ear is remarkably sensitive to frequency differences, but much less so to loudness differences. there's quite a bit of study that has gone into that as well. The effort has produced a lot of measurable data on what the tiniest difference in actual sound pressure level that humans, on average, can distinguish. That has produced numbers that categorize how big the differences are in hearing threshold, as well as information on loudness differences that can be distinguished. The instruments can generate tiny differences in sound pressure level that are quite easily measurable, and may or may not be detectable by a human. That was the very basis of the tests.

So if there is an increase or decrease in sound level at some frequency, it would be measurable to a degree finer than the human ear, on average, can distinguish it.

Can you measure "softness"? Can you measure teflon's peaky-ness? If there is a real peak, surely it would be measurable, correct? If teflon with copper is softer, but it it overly bright with silver and silver plated copper, can that be measured. If there is a "softer" or a "peakier", it ought to have an effect on the spectrum of sound going through the wires, right? If there is no measurable effect on the sound after it goes through different wires, was there in fact a difference?

If it cannot be measured, does it even exist?

If you want bright then silver plated copper mil-spec with PTFE maybe the way to go but you may end up with a sound that is sterile. PVC has a pretty high dielectric constant which is bad in highend audio for anything carrying signal but if you have an amp that is/maybe/you are concerned will be bright, PVC insulated wire won't exacerbate the problem. Solid silver has the most potential but is the most difficult to get a balanced presentation from. Typically silver is Teflon insulated making it very bright but it's detail retrieval can be staggering. Not sure that anybody would opt for wiring up their amp with silver but if they did polyethylene insulation might be a better choice. When I put new pots/switches/pups in my G&L I used silver because I had some extra on hand and wanted the neck pickup to be a clear as possible. Did it make a difference, I don't know, I switched so many things at the same time but it didn't hurt.

Can you define what you mean by:
Brighter
Sterile
"bad in highend audio for anything carrying signal"
"solid silver has the most potential"
"balanced presentation"
"detail retrieval"

I'm completely with you on "it didn't hurt". It's the extra zip/focus/sterility/balanced presentation/detail retrieval/softness/peakiness and so on that I'm having problems with. How do I define those, let alone measure them?

I'm in the process of building my first amp

That's very good indeed. Welcome to the club. One thing to be aware of is that with guitar amps, differences in the frequency responses of speakers in guitar amps are HUGE. So is speaker distortion. I'd suggest that you audition quite a few speakers to get an idea of which is the most focused, soft, etc.

I have no clue, but all wire doesn't sound the same.

I'm willing to go with you on that - but how do I measure the various effects so I can reach some predefined goal, rather than just swapping out stuff and hoping for a good result?

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, said it this way:
“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarely, in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science.”

[cpk313]

Very insightful and thanks for sharing. I am building an amp with your least favourite, a PTFE mil-spec, 1.5mm thick, silver-plated copper core conductor with 19 strands, 1000V, 14A. I choose it because I thought it might be more HI-FI ish (a tad brigther) given I am expecting this specific amp to be a bit on the dark side. Hopefully it won't be overly bright, brittle or sterile. I will report back once it is done.

What brand/part number are you using on the high quality stranded copper wire with polyethylene insulation? I'd love to try these on the next amp

That's some stout wire! It's like 15awg, it is definitely not going to add any soft/warm/fuzzy. I think if you were worried about the amp being dark you went the right way though the gauge seems a little large but is not coming from experience just a gut feeling. There is so much that goes into the sound of the amp and wire, because the lengths and amount are small/short (except for what's in the trannies), it's effect on the sound will be more subtle in comparison to other components like transformers or even capacitors. But all those subtleties add up and helps make the difference. Again my experience is extensively in hifi but I don't doubt some of the lessons I have learned have some validity with guitar amps. I think if the rest of the amp was being built with metal film resistors, and teflon film capacitors then you might have issues with the tone sounding sterile but people usually don't put those in guitar amps;)

The PE wire that I have was made for Vampire wire many years ago by Neotech/Wan Lung. It is a 20awg (iirc) UPOCC copper that is 99.9999blah,blah,blah pure (ha) and was a little soft for interconnects but I am hoping will sound very nice in the Matchless 2 channel 15w I am building (1ch Spitfire 2ch Nighthawk). Unfortunately the wire has not been available for a long time to end users.