Fender Sliverface Musicmaster Bass Amp

[Steve Conner]

Probably because they like the look of it, or like bragging to their friends that they spent $200 on speaker cables.

I guarantee you will fail to tell the difference between #14, #18, and #20 speaker drops in a properly controlled blind test. Heck, most people can't even tell the difference between tube and transistor stereo amps in a blind test, and nobody that I know of can tell the difference between two different brands of transistor stereo amp.

Having said that, I use #14 speaker cable for hooking a head to a cabinet. I like the Van Damme brand because it coils up easier, and doesn't look cheap and nasty. 20 gauge zip cord looks ghetto and gets broken easily. But the orange line cord Home Depot etc. sell for lawn mowers and power tools sounds just as good as OFC

[capnjuan]

Well, it's possible that people spend alot of money on speaker cables for reasons other than sound quality. I'm just a guy with a soldering iron but I think everything in the audio chain, including speaker feeds, influences sound quality.

For the effort in re-habbing my gear that I go through, I'm not gonna just sit there and listen to a pair of stiffened-up, usually spliced, heavily oxidized #20s but it's okay with me if you do.

To put an end to splicing the OT outputs, I usually put a new wiring strip next to the OT, tie the OT output there, and attach new speaker drops. Since the drops are new, the choice is between whatever is laying around or something that gives the amp the best shot a saying whatever it has to say.

Like I said, having made the effort, not going to cap it off with anything that's in the least restrictive. Needless? Maybe, but I don't like to leave out any step/tweak that I think might help.

[Steve Conner]

Oh, so wire sounds different if it's stiff now? All I'm trying to say is, sure everything in the signal chain affects the sound to some degree, but if I had to pick the one thing that affected it least, it would be the wire that hooks the amp chassis to the speaker. So when building, I pick the wire based on how it looks. I would replace those speaker drop wires just the same as you, but just because they looked tatty.

I built a small home studio that has about a quarter mile of patch leads and interconnects in it, and if I worried about how each piece of wire coloured the sound, I would go insane, broke, or both. I've lately been rewiring it all with a couple of patch bays, and I bought a bulk pack of $0.25 stereo jack plugs and a huge reel of the cheapest balanced mic cable I could find.

[capnjuan]

You're killing me

I've cleaned up several early 60s Gibson amps; GA1RT, GA5, GA18, and a GA19 although the GA19 isn't out of the woods just yet - I'm begging for 7199 / reverb hum help elsewhere on this board.

Each amp had nasty, spliced, and due to the surface oxidation on the wire, stiff speaker leads - though once new, they now have resistive coating of corrosion. The OFHC is prettier, more flexible, I'm replacing the drops anyhow, and IMO for the cost of the relatively short lengths, worth the money although I'd have to confess that if I thought gluing stacks of newspaper on an amp would 'help' the sound, I'd probably do that too.

The GA1RT has an 8" Celestion and the others 10" and 12" Webers. For the money I have in the amps, speakers, and parts, I can't bring myself to close up before covering this detail but I gotta tell you that after the Celestion went in the GA1RT, I upgraded the drops and got noticeably more width and depth...it's an 8 watt amp...everything makes a difference.

Imagining things? I guess it's possible but when I'm sipping my Stoly and beating something out, I know that I've done all I can do to get as much sound as the stock circuits can produce - they are as good as I can get them.

FWIW: I also take little brushes and alcohol and clean all the grungy amp cheese off the insulation on the inside wiring. Obsessive? Too little to do? Maybe but I have several wonderful-sounding examples of early 60s Gibson student amps to show for my trouble; after all in for a dime, in for a dollar.

Warm regards,