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I have a NAD 3240PE Integrated amp that I am upgrading a little. I have already replaced the stock power cord. Something that looks very cheap is the internal speaker wiring. The rear banana posts are soldered to a circuit board, and then the internal speaker wiring is also soldered to this board and runs the entire length of the amp to the front where they terminate on the main board near the speaker selector switch. The wiring is extremely thin (maybe 22 gauge) and very sloppily attached to the rear board.So what we have is the signal going from the speaker selector switch, through thin wire attached by solder through a printed circuit board, through solder again to the banana plug. Then it finally gets to my Wireworld Oasis 10 gauge speaker cable. Hardly a comforting thought! I might as well run 22 gauge lamp cord the whole way!
I was thinking of replacing the internal wire with thicker 14 or 12 gauge wire, removing the cheap banana plug circuit board, and attaching the wire directly (instead of through a board via solder) to better quality terminals at the rear.
Will any good quality speaker wire suffice? Or does the internal wiring have to be certified in some way? Will this improve the sound?
Follow Ups:
This is why I run thin 28g guage as speaker wires too.But go ahead and think I am nuts.
While you are at it, apply your thicker is better logic, and see that you have much work to do. Once you finish with your amp, you might as well open up your speakers. Have fun there, and order the caps with the 12g leads, inductors wound with heavy guage wire and don't forget to get voice coils that are 16g too....unless you are actively bi-amping that is.
Fwiw, my Pass labs x-150 amp has pretty thin wire to its binding posts too....but is one hell of an amp.
IMHO it may hurt the sound, and the poster who talked about quality vs guage is right on. YMMV.
...the little wire, switches, and solder joints probably will improve the sound.Personally, I'd use a couple conductors of the 18g. UPOCC*, Teflon-insulated copper wire I bought from Sonic Craft. It's easy to work with and plenty heavy (2 conductors = 15g.) for such short pieces. Even a single piece of 14g. home-AC wiring would sound better than the mess that's in there. No it doesn't need to be certified by anyone.
Just keep the polarites straight. Enjoy.
* Ultra-Pure Ohno-Continuous-Cast, perhaps the best-sounding copper wire money can buy.
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Tin-eared audiofool and obsessed landscape fotografer.
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You're discovering the welding-cable-to-hookup-wire conundrum. If you follow the speaker wire logic, then all internal amp wiring should be 6-gauge, solid silver handlebars, unless all that talk about super-thick speaker wire is just nonsense.
Not really! Different circuit applications call for different gauges and conductor types. In the input stage of an amp, for instance, small gauge wiring of good quality will work very well in many circuit designs. The heavier stuff is more effective in a star grounding scheme and as output wire going to the binding posts.benhen..MH experience has shown me that conductor QUALITY is more important than gauge in an absolute sense. Yes, speaker cable should be of a higher gauge than interconnects because they need to pass along greater current/voltages without loss. Can some of the cable stuff get a bit nutty and approach the law of diminishing returns? You Bet. Musically yours.
Short internal lengths sorta preclude the need to "super-size" the internal wiring.
My thinking is that the fewer connections and conductor type/size changes for your amp output to go through, the better. I have an older power amp that I installed modern binding posts in. I also bypassed the speaker selector switches since I have absolutely no plans for more than a stereo pair of speakers. These two mods did improve the sound slightly even though I left in the original internal 18-ga, tinned copper in. I WILL be getting some better grade all copper wire and going back to finish the job ;^) .
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