Phoenix Gold Phorum

I hope its okay to post in here about this.. As some of you know Ive sold wire since ive opened KHPower in 1997. I used to just sell Phoneix Gold and all the wonderful wire/cable that they produced one of my favorite being the powerflex.

Anyways id like everyone to chime in on wire they use now for speakers,amps etc. and give me good reasons why you enjoy the wire wheather that be cost ,quality or color

Let me know and I hope this comes out interesting.

One wire I am stuck on is made by Daxx and its some wonderful stuff ,Just on the high side thou

As far as power cable ...I've been using KnuKonceptz Kolossus wire, 100% OFC and strand count can't be beat as well as the price. A 20 foot section will run ya about $90 shipped and the other sizes they have are just as good. Used to use stinger, but it's over priced.

http://www.knukonceptz.com/productMaste ... y=Kolossus Fleks Kable

Thanks I hear great things from them too. I also soeday want to make my own branded cables because that has been my business for years

Keep em coming fellas

I go for the knu-kolossus wire too.

i keep an eye out on ebay and amazon for the last PG PF1 kits, as well as the high end stinger and kicker kits too.

knu makes good stuff and used it before but the past few years only wire I have been looking for was PG wire for my pg install

Well Uncle Kyle here at KHPower Car Audio just may have some PG wire left maybe..

I need a shit pile of 0/1ga and 12ga and 16ga speaker wire


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Cliff notes: I'm cheap.

I use the cheapest cable I can find that specs to what I need. Speaker cable has been monoprice for a while. Its a little stiffer than some more expensive wire, but I haven't had any corrosion issues like I've seen with some inexpensive stuff sold as speaker wire, and the insulation holds up to soldering heat well.
http://www.monoprice.com/Product/?c_id= ... 4#feedback

The RCAs I'm using now in the car are the monoprice digital coax cables. Double copper braid , reasonably low capacitance, and the ends are serviceable. I got the 12 foot runs for <$10 for a stereo pair, then cut them to size and re-terminated. Its really stiff, if I wasn't on a budget it wouldn't be my first choice in the car for that reason, but it does the job.

http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=1 ... 1&format=2

At home for much shorter runs I've used canare and belden 2 conductor + drain w/ double braided shield with Neutrik Rean connectors. http://www.parts-express.com/neutrik-re ... r--092-113. I like having the flexibility of being able to ground the cable shield to chassis of the component being fed if it isn't done internally which is common with unbalanced consumer stuff.

I'm running the Knu CCA power for my battery-trunk, again for budget reasons. I had a bunch of old Amp King OFC 8awg that I've used up for my short runs, I really like it but I don't think they make it anymore. Just seems like a good quality copper wire, tough insulation, and iirc it was cheap.

I had a crazy install years ago in my 99 grand am and I only used PG wire (1/0 red, led distro block, QLX RCAs...) but since then I've used only Knu OFC. For RCAs I have started making my own using high end connectors and high end shielded cabling. I haven't seen RCAs that I like since the QLX series went away.

Oh I forgot, I used to work for a monster dealer and I like the wire but it's overpriced. I did use monster series power and ground wire in one of my installs along with XLNpro series RCAs. Way overpriced but I got it dirt cheap.

Wire is wire pretty much. The best deal is the best way to go. Just don't skimp and get smaller wire than you need.

Kirghiz wrote:Wire is wire pretty much. The best deal is the best way to go. Just don't skimp and get smaller wire than you need.

actually not nessesarily , ive pulled wire that has gotten so hot it melted the cover and caused damage and one year we did a test with your basic pawn shop wire using 15 ' of hat and PG powerflow ,flex and the temp raised on the cheap stuff and there ws loss in voltage..

And the PG Powerflow maintained temp and the vltage we put through it .. I take my wire seriously lol

Its taken me quite awhile to source it all, but i am using all old school PG wire. I have heard lots of good things about the Knu OFC.

LL

Its tough getting the old wire and the knu stuff is also great . Daxx wire is ultimatley the best

I actually believe that wire, that is quality of wires all types, be it speaker or interconnects is one of the most overlooked items for people looking for sq for spl not so important as long as its large enough or better yet a little bigger than required for peaks in output, I've tried everything down to running 5 runs of cat 5 cable which really increases mid frequencies, but have found no replacement for good quality cables, I run all qlx interconnects and old school pg ofc cables for my cars and in my home it's all linn kh400 for speakers and arx and qlx for interconnects and IMO every time I've upgraded a interconnect or speaker wire from mid to high end the difference has been quite noticeable


Well IMO it's worth the cost but that's up to the individual

Oops I meant the previous post was suppose to be to a PM I received. Oh well ha ha

Kirghiz wrote:Wire is wire pretty much. The best deal is the best way to go. Just don't skimp and get smaller wire than you need.

I disagree also there are way too many brands out there now with insulation 2-3x as thick as normal to make an 8 awg wire look like a 4 awg and super cheap metal that corrodes in no time flat. Seen crap turn green in the insulation before it was even out of the package but it was OFC....

LOL I knew this was gonna take a turn at some point. Kirghiz and ttocs are both right. If the electrical and physical properties of two different brands of wire are essentially the same, there is no "magic' that can make one outperform the other.

Bottom line is you can either believe in physics and use real, measurable and quantifiable properties to dictate quality or you can believe in magic, marketing hype and snake oil. We have all seen the insane and ridiculous claims some manufacturers make to sell a few feet of cable for thousands of dollars. For me, if you can't measure it, its bullshit. Properly done testing has proven this time and again. If you choose to believe you hear a difference and want to pay thousands of dollars for cables that doesn't bother me, but its hard for me to take any claims about their performance seriously without quantifiable evidence to back the claims. That's just my opinion.

Is there something to be said for stuff that's a littler more expensive and really nice like some of the PG stuff or the Daxx mentioned in this thread? Sure. Some of your guys' installs are gorgeous, I can't imagine not going all out on the cabling and other incidentals too in that case. There's no wire that can make you hear things that aren't there though, but shitty cable can make you not hear things that are there and make it SEEM like you hear things you didn't before with other wire, that's a fact. If you want to read the science behind it this article does a great job explaining it plus a lot of other useful info on speaker wire and connections.

http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

That Daxx cable looks pretty fairly priced. The premium power wire with fully tinned ofc strands is overkill for me, but its cheap enough that I may give it a try next time.

I've had excellent results with the CL2 (white jacketed) speaker wire from Monoprice dot com which is about as cheap as you can get oxygen free copper speaker wire. I also use Welding Supply for my power wire. It's excellent quality and very low priced for how good it is.

KHPower wrote:

Kirghiz wrote:Wire is wire pretty much. The best deal is the best way to go. Just don't skimp and get smaller wire than you need.

actually not nessesarily , ive pulled wire that has gotten so hot it melted the cover and caused damage and one year we did a test with your basic pawn shop wire using 15 ' of hat and PG powerflow ,flex and the temp raised on the cheap stuff and there ws loss in voltage..

That means you weren't using the proper gauge wire for the amperage you were supplying through the cable.

I have seen cables that look like copper and are heavy like copper but measure three times the resistance of copper. I don't know what they put into these cheap crap cables, but they can be dangerous because they can't take as much current as you assume.

Mr. Wild wrote:I have seen cables that look like copper and are heavy like copper but measure three times the resistance of copper. I don't know what they put into these cheap crap cables, but they can be dangerous because they can't take as much current as you assume.

It's likely the "hot" new alternative- CCA. Copper clad aluminum. It basically looks like copper wire, but is almost entirely aluminum and does not have the same ampacity per foot as OFC. If you use CCA wire, you need to ensure that you increase the gauge of the wire you use to account for this.

http://bcae1.com


^ This is a great resource for things like this

I dont mean CCA. CCA is much lighter than copper and you can see the aluminum colour at the cut end of the cable. This stuff I mentioned is probably some junk heavy metal with some copper for colour. Its a crime if you ask me to sell junk as power wire.