speaker wire (gauge) size??

[Travo-18 1]

i got an Fi BTL 12 fully loaded and i want to know what the best size of wire would be for the sub... im pushing roughly 2600 watts rms to it... so what woulod be the best that way i dont fry my tinsel leads.... 12ga, 16ga etc....??

[JimJ 11]

I would go with 12awg...but whatever gauge speaker wire you use won't fry your tinsel leads.

[loudcav 1]

you could also use 8guage wire

[patented17 21]

8 gauge is a bitch to get in those.

[///M5 2,833]

And completely unecessary

[damonhargroves07 0]

i would use true 10 awg wire!

[BKOLFO4 29]

And completely unecessary

But it looks good.

[jonbearsmt 919]

i used 8 gauge on my 15 bl's.. hard but its so worth it when people see that my speaker wire is bigger then their power wire

[emperorjj1 2]

lol using 8g as speaker wire is fun... especially when ur wiring in parallel

[audiofanaticz 0]

you could also use 8guage wire

ditto

8 gauge is a bitch to get in those.

Buy some reducers?

And completely unecessary

How so? if 8 gauge is completly unecessary, wouldnt owning a fully loaded fi btl 12 be completly unecessary?

Going overkill on your wires will never hurt your stereo, but running with tiny 16-12 gauge will.

It will raise resistance, and not allow every drip of power to get to your speakers.

Maybe I will gain a few DB's if I rewire my sub with 16 gauge speaker wire?

Underkill ftw?

Edited January 16, 2008 by audiofanaticz

[johnecon2001 82]

you could also use 8guage wire

ditto

8 gauge is a bitch to get in those.

Buy some reducers?

And completely unecessary

How so? if 8 gauge is completly unecessary, wouldnt owning a fully loaded fi btl 12 be completly unecessary?

Going overkill on your wires will never hurt your stereo, but running with tiny 16-12 gauge will.

It will raise resistance, and not allow every drip of power to get to your speakers.

Maybe I will gain a few DB's if I rewire my sub with 16 gauge speaker wire?

Underkill ftw?

It might matter in higher wattage systems (maybe like yours), but in this case, I doubt the OP is going over 2kW (saying "roughly 2600w" is probably not 2600w) .

And for that little power, 12 awg is right in the sweet spot. Anything more is unnecessary.

[BKOLFO4 29]

A true 2600 watts @ 1 ohm is over 50 amps of current. If you were going to be burping with a sine wave, 12 ga would not be the best choice. . .

[sixftjap 0]

And completely unecessary

I was running extreme last year and 4ga speaker wire yeilded a 0.4db gain over 8ga. I tried 2ga but nothing. But this will also depend on your application.

[JimJ 11]

How so? if 8 gauge is completly unecessary, wouldnt owning a fully loaded fi btl 12 be completly unecessary?

In my opinion, yes

[johnecon2001 82]

And completely unecessary

I was running extreme last year and 4ga speaker wire yeilded a 0.4db gain over 8ga. I tried 2ga but nothing. But this will also depend on your application.

That doesn't even apply here! You were probably running considerably more power to your woofers than the OP is.

[Megalomaniac 0]

holy fire hazard!(dd picture posted)

[shizzzon 461]

i thought about using bolts as speaker terminals for the box but never tested their conductivity and chose not to in the end.

IF you are serious about what gauge size, get the specs out here.

To achieve a certain wattage, you must multiply volts and amps together.

If you have never set a DMM on speaker output of an amp, then you will not know that voltage output, depending on the amp, can go well over 200volts.

You will also not know that if you have a sub wired to a certain ohm load, let's say 1 ohm(or DCR 0.7), that during playback, it could be over 4 ohm.

now, there's no sense in guessing how much power each frequency will produce so just take the amp's maximum rating.

Examples -

1200w @ 1ohm = 35v, 35a

1200w @ 2ohm = 50v, 25a

2500w @ 1ohm = 50v, 50a

Get the picture?

Now, since you know that, now let's see how thick of wire you need for a good transfer of current.

go here - http://www.stealth316.com/2-wire-resistance.htm

That website is suppose to be to find out how thick of wire you need for your power wire, but you, at least, get to see the resistance ratings for each gauge size all the way up to 1/0 wire. I do not think voltage drop can be a relevant spec for speaker wire considering how high voltage output is on an amp.

If you look, you can see that the thicker the wire, the less resistance.

Going from 16 to 14 gauge is a pretty big difference.

Going from 14 to 10 gauge is a big difference as well.

Larger than 10 gauge - 6 or 4 gauge will probably be noticeable but that's if you can get it to fit in there.