LavaMan - Canare GS-6 as speaker cable - Comment?

[El Glom-o]

I see in the Canare catalog that they spec their GS-6 cable as being suitable for amp-to-speaker connections.

 

I suppose that the dielectric between the center conductor and braid is robust enough that they feel safe that it won't break down under the higher load of speaker voltages, and that the braid is thick enough to be a suitable conductor of those voltages.

 

I think I'll continue to use 14 AWG twin lead for speakers.

 

Any comments?

[pipedwho]

Speaker cable is really about a thick enough conductor to carry the amperage at full load. The insulation around the conductors in these cables wouldn't be anywhere near breakdown from speaker drive voltages. (Ok, it might be problem if you are trying to drive a 4 Ohm speaker with 4000 Watts. But, any normal guitar amp will be fine.

 

The real question is whether or not the conductors are thick enough (ie. low enough impedance) to handle the current flow without heating up and melting, or just generally negatively affecting the signal.

[LavaMan]

I have been aware of that for awhile and used one in my Mark IV combo for awhile.

 

The GS-6 has a high strand count (127) to handle the amps and voltage being put out by an amps output.

 

Although Canare says you can use it for a speaker cable, they did not design it for this as its main purpose.

 

I would not really recommend using it, not that it will damage your amp ar anything, but there are much better cables out there for this and Canare's 4S8 is an example of this.