make your own? I did it once, knowing nothing about wires.
In 1978, age 30, I had to run 50 ft speaker wires once. Never used anything more than Radio Shack ’lamp cord’ before. My primitive instinct was, need a lot of copper.
Without doing any research, and having no money, I went to electrical supply house, bought 4 spools of heavy gauge solid core wire, 4 different colors, stiff but able to flex/bend/navigate.
Twisted them clockwise for about 4 ft, taped, twisted back other direction 4 ft, tape, back to clockwise, IOW, you don’t need to twist all the same direction which would involve flipping the entire length of wire over every twist.They worked, never a problem.
1998, 20 years later, new arrangement needing only 12’ lengths, doing research, I decided to believe in small solid core, multi strand, individually insulated, jacketed. Sounded like Cat 5, so I twisted two pairs of Cat 5, each leg 8 strands each, been loving them for 22 years, tubes, SS, tubes,
Years later, my friend who always had pricey cables but loved my system before and after, found a company making speaker cables out of cat 5, but using a pair, 16 strands per leg, factory connectors. His runs 10ft. Bought em, loves em to this day.
Point is, what I decided to believe in, very small solid core is opposite of those long large diameter solid core. Difference? I never was able to compare them.
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*** I read here not long ago, there can be technical issues with long runs of cat 5 for speakers, others could say ***
