DIY cat 6 FEP "TEFLON"

UPDATE: I have converted my 8ft. FEP Teflon Cat-6 speaker cables into power cords. I've been playing them for two weeks now on my digital players with very good results. Read my original post for a description of the DIY FEP Teflon cables that are bee's wax coated. I ran a separate ground cable wrapped around the CAT 6 (like the VH Audio Flavor 4 power cord). The CAT 6 power cords replaced a 7ft. Signal Cable Ref. Digital power cord (the red one) and a 3ft. BPT L-9 with Oyaide P-004-C-004 ends. The red Signal power cord is very good power cord for Digital equipment regardless of price. So after 2 weeks of playing the DIY CAT 6 power cords still sound just as good( I think better). BTW your choice of ground cable will affect the sound of the power cord more than you would think. The sound is full bodied, with good details and imaging. Sound stage is a little wider than the Signal Ref. bass is about the same, which is very good. Both of these power cords blow the BPT L-9 out of the water on digital gear (in my system). This is a case of having a great athlete on your team, you don't just let them just stand there on the sidelines. You find away of getting them in the game to take advantage of the talent. I made these cables 4 years ago. It was there time to play. Not where I first thought they would be playing, but hey there in the game making a positive impact.

Hi, Just to answer a few of the questions above. I do not use or need any type of Zorbel network on the DIY cat6 speaker cables. I have Hales Revelations 3 speakers (86db). I have in the past used Odyssey Extreme Mono blocks 300wpc to drive them. I made my first pair of cat6 speaker cables for them. 4ft is all I needed(mono-blocks). And the combo sounded great. But needed to down size to single amp. So I sold the very large but great sounding Odyssey Extreme Mono's(red boards). I am saving my chips now for something new. But I have been using a 60wpc Adcom GFA 535 to drive the Hales with ease. This little amp rocks. It has a lot more power than you might think. I upgraded all the fuses to ceramic instead of glass(same value). Then I made the cat6 speaker cables that are the subject of this post. And as I stated before they add a great deal to my musical enjoyment. I use bare wire on the amp end and spades on the speaker end. The DIY cat 6 is 8ft in length and very neutral sounding mids,highs,and bass are all there in spades. I have to admit that 60 good wpc(Adcom) does not beat 300 very good wpc(Odyssey). But this is were I am at now, and with the DIY cat6 speaker cables in the mix, it not that bad of a place to be. Cford - I have an all Green or all Blue 27 pair Teflon cat6 set up ready for braiding. I have separated the 27 pairs in 9 groups of 3. The outer jacket is also removed as like the Chris VH audio recipe. email me if you are intrested. edwrjam1@bellsouth.net

Where did you get your cat 6 cable?

JeAudio: You certainly put some serious effort into this! I am glad you had good results.

A couple of questions for you: Did you have any amplifier problems driving the capacitive load? Did you build a Zorbel network on one or both ends? and, Is your amplifier a tube unit with a transformer output stage or a solid state unit?

Thanks!

Hi, Sorry I was not detailed enough in my post, but I did split each brown pair. Solid brown for hot + and white brown for ground -. BTW using one color makes for a nicer looking speaker cable IMO than the very busy looking multi colored standard. But I am glade to hear that there would not be any time smear issues even if I made them the normal way. The cat 6 speaker cables came out very nice if I do say so myself, and what they add to musical enjoyment was worth the extra effort. Thanks for your helpful tips and info.

You might try using one half of each twisted pair for the hot signal and the other half for the ground. This will increase capacitance a bit but it will lower inductance, which is the real problem at these currents and impedances.

Note that a tighter twist means more copper in series with the speaker, not more copper in thickness. This will increase the series resistance a tad, which will not be a problem if you are using all 27 pairs. The best benefit of the tighter twist is less inductance, which is a very big plus.

Don't worry about time smear; you can measure this and you will need to have 100 feet of speaker cable to have 1/4 inch of time smear. With the twisted pairs you are using, I doubt you would even have that.