Rbrowne,
I'm also interested in WE16GA vs Belden 9497.
Dr. John at CheapTubeAudio has some short articles about the Belden speaker wire:
http://cheaptubeaudio.blogspot.com/2009/08/review-belden-9497.html
http://cheaptubeaudio.blogspot.com/2012/02/pic-from-second-japanese-article.html
http://cheaptubeaudio.blogspot.com/2014/04/l-497mkii-r-9497-click-pic-to-enlarge.html