Speaker Jumpers - Same Brand as Speaker Cables?


My speakers are best bi-wired. I currently have bi-wire speaker cables, but am considering buying very high-priced and probably better speaker cables that are single wire. The manufacturer of the new cables sells jumpers, but they are very expensive and not available used. Do I run an audible risk if I use jumpers from another manufacturer, or should I be "in for a penny, in for a pound" and bite the bullet? Thanks for the advice.
nglazer
Well, I now have the cables with some extra length to make it easy to use both posts of my bi-wireable speakers (JBL 4319). Having to feed both pos and neg at the same time due to the stiffness of a solid core 14 AWG silver wire was a bit of a PITA.

The ridge between the upper and lower posts was more of an obstacle than I thought it would be. I had to gently pluck both leads as they came out of the lower post towards me and then bend them back at the proper angle while feeding it from below but I got it to work. Both pos and neg has to be fed at the same time. The second set was much easier after knowing how to do it. Thank you, JBL, for aligning all the posts so the eye holes all face upwards.

Joe, from Tempo Electric was thoughtful enough to add in some extra sheathing (oversized tubing) for the exposed bits here and there and all it took was some cutting and fitting to limit the wires exposure.

Eliminating the jumpers was a step in the right direction. I no longer have four different metals and dielectric to mess with the signal. It’s just the bare end of the speaker wire attached to both posts: it’s as simple as it gets.

KISS.

I highly recommend this even with stranded wire. As long as you can thread it through the eye of the post and watch for stray strands, all should go well. Then go back and after cutting a slit along the length of the tubing, press it over the cable and it should be enough to inhibit oxidation, at least slowing it down.

If solid core copper cable is your thing, try to get some soft annealed copper as it could be quite a PITA to get it to bend. It’s worth it to try it. And, go for as large a gauge as you can afford. I wish I would have bought 12 gauge, solid silver years back instead of buying all the cabling I now have. Hindsight is 20/20.

All the best,
Nonoise


Wireworld makes matching jumpers for all its speaker cables, which range over a wide gamut of prices.
I did an A-B swap-in / swap-out bake off between biwired vs single runs and matched jumpers with NORDOST FREY speaker cables in MY system ( emphasis added ))

The clear winner for me was a stepped up variant of the single cable option: a full doubled up shotgunned loom of FREYs with matched shotgunned FREY jumpers. It mirrored the NORDOST commentary below vis-a-vis the  key point already highlighted,  in that high quality single runs with high quality jumpers will invariably best cheap quality bi-wires.

http://www.nordost.com/downloads/NorseJumperinstructions.pdf

There is no onesize fits all approach .... full stop. The only way to know is to actually do an A-B shootout.

 I would not buy any uber- expensive cables (bi wires or changing to single & jumpers ) until I satisfied myself that which option is the best option forward FIRST.





I use AQ bare jumpers:  https://www.amazon.com/SET-4-GOLD-BIWIRE-JUMPERS/dp/B005A5Z758/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1519352772...

They also come silver plated.  More expensive jumpers offer fancy insulation material, while bare jumpers (if you can use them) offer the best insulation available: air




@gdnrbob,
There's nothing between the lower and upper post except a small ridge that's part of the plastic encasement they reside in. Positive on one side, negative on the other. I checked out the eye of the post for the terminal and fortunately, it runs straight up so it's a straight shot from the bottom one to the top one, except for the slight ridge in between.

I haven't checked all of them but even if one is not truly straight up, it would be no more difficult than bending the wire some around the post, giving it more contact area, and then affixing it to the upper post.

All the best,
Nonoise
Neal, as with any other audio related question, ask 10 different audiophiles a question, and you will get 11 different answers. ;^)

For my $0.02, I will say that overall, I have had more success with higher quality single run of speaker cable with a quality jumper than I have had with two runs of a lower quality cable.
As for the jumpers, working with the same brand may not require any thinking, but I have also had success using two different companies also.
I try to stay with companies that have a similar tonal balance.

For instance, at this time I own a pair of Silent Source The Music Reference with matching jumpers. I also own a pair of Purist Audio Proteus Provectus speaker cables, and I am using a pair of Elrod Gold Statement jumpers.

I change these cables around when I want to shake things up a bit.
The Silent Source are very transparent and resolving, while still sounding musical. The PAD and the Elrod are both fuller, richer sounding cables.
I did try the SS jumpers with the PAD cables, but I preferred the Elrod jumpers with the PAD.
I have owned PAD jumpers previously, and while I like them, again, I like the Elrod better. In fact, I like the Elrod so much that I have been looking for some used Elrod speaker cables at a reasonable price.

To make a long story short (too late), I prefer higher quality single wire with jumpers over lower quality bi-wire. However, that is only MY opinion.

I'm sure that many will offer many other opinions that may be very different from my own. The great thing about this hobby is no one is right, and no one is wrong. There is no one single path to audio nirvana.

Good luck!

Cheers,
John
@nonoise .
Aren't you concerned about shorting the wires if they touch something metallic between the two posts?
B
If what you mean by single wire is solid core or even stranded, and if it is bare ended (no termination), see if the eye of each speaker binding post is big enough to fit the wire through and have enough wire to simply reach both posts.

I will be doing just that when I get my new Tempo Electric speaker cables, on the advice of the guy who makes them. They are single, solid core and even 14 AWG will fit through the eye of each of my posts, easily.

All the best,
Nonoise
There is another thread on Agon you should look at.
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/bi-wire-cables-vs-jumpers
and,
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/to-bi-wire-or-not-2

The brand of cable depends on your speaker. I would contact the manufacturer and find out what they recommend.
That being said, I would get true bi wire cables and be done with it.
Audioquest makes very good cables, and a GO-4 is relatively inexpensive and give good results.
What is your speaker? and what cables are you looking at?
B