Need Advice On Securing Speaker Wire

[Anthony G]

Probably not, 100 watts is not that much. Well 100 watts tube driven now that would be loud as hell. 100 watts tube driven can literally injure you.

I meant 100 watts they way they used to measure it is. Like from a silver-faced amp or receiver from the 1970's. Not the digital stuff of today. 100 real watts thumps pretty well. I have a 150 watt Marantz amplifier and it nearly cracks my walls if I crank it.

 

[Anthony G]

Zip Cord then. One conductor ribbed for polarity marking. That link I put up has the 2 nail style along with U-Nails and Telephone wire clips.

On those "u-type" nails, they have dimensions "A & B" listed in mm. Do you know which dimension is the "A" and which is the "B"? And where do you find/buy them?

 

[atunguyd]

Have you considered hot glue (aka glue gun). I use this for most wires and it is a lot neater than cable clips. Plus when it comes time to remove it a hair dryer does the job without leaving behind any marks.

Sent from my SM-N920C using Tapatalk

 

[Anthony G]

Have you considered hot glue (aka glue gun). I use this for most wires and it is a lot neater than cable clips. Plus when it comes time to remove it a hair dryer does the job without leaving behind any marks.

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To be honest, I really haven't considered that. It's a long run and some of the wood is pretty dirty from being 40 years old. I've used glue guns, but I'm just not sure how neat it would be. It would have to be a really small dab of glue because when I press the wire into it, I don't want it squeezing out the sides.

Anyway, tomorrow is another day. I'll do some more investigating then. Thanks to all for the suggestions and ideas. Keep them coming.

 

[Tony Wells]

The smaller of the two is always the width. I buy them from electrical wholesalers.

Lowes has these:

Gardner Bender 2000-Count 1/2-in Plastic Insulated Cable Staples
Item #: 102145 | Model #: PS-750B

 

[uncle harry]

If this is posted in the wrong thread, I apologize as I wasn't sure where to put it. So, please move if need be.

I'm in the process of updating my workspace. I painted the walls of my garage (concrete block) and I'm running all new electric service and runs. In the spring I may put down one of those epoxy floor systems. I'm also replacing my crappy old boombox stereo with a kicka** amplifier, preamplifier, and tuner along with some vintage kicka** thumping speakers. I built shelves for the speakers that mount in two corners of the garage. And because one of the speakers is about 50 feet away from where I'm putting the stereo (I put the stereo in a wall cabinet to protect it some), I had to buy some heavier speaker wire of 14 gauge.

The problem I'm having is finding cable staples to secure the wire. It's flat speaker wire and measures about .282 across. I've been to 4 different stores looking for some type of low-voltage staple to secure the wire, but can't find anything appropriate. I've done a bunch of Google and Bing searching too and all I can seem to find is those 3/16" staples. I have some of those Gardner-Bender, low-voltage staples, the plastic ones with the single nail, that have the 3/16" slot, and the wire will not fit into the slot of the staple. I found some 1/4" staples, but they're for coax cable so they won't secure the flat wire, either. I know that .282 is larger than .250", but I was hoping that I might *possibly* be able to "force" the speaker wire into the slot and secure the staple. But, the staple has to have the "flat" type slot and not the kind with the radius used for securing round coax cable. You'd think they'd make 1/4" cable staples. Seems like a pretty nominal, common size to me.

Does anyone know of any type of cable staple that would work? Or, any other method? I'm open to suggestions. I would like the job to be neat. I'd like the wire to be secured well. I'm running it along the header at the front of the garage and then make a 90 degree turn along the outer ceiling joist to get to the speaker and I'd like it to stay in place and be straight without dips, etc. I can't secure the wire to the new electric conduit with zip-ties as that's illegal. Believe me, I would if I could as it would make this whole job easier.

Check out McMaster Carr; cable tie mounting pads. They are available with adhesive pads for mounting on smooth surfaces. Some are also available with mounting holes. They accept cable ties to mount any size cables. wire bundle harnesses or even tubing.
They can also be found @ electric supply outlets like Greybar or electronic outlets as has been mentioned above.

 

[Anthony G]

The smaller of the two is always the width. I buy them from electrical wholesalers.

Lowes has these:

Gardner Bender 2000-Count 1/2-in Plastic Insulated Cable Staples
Item #: 102145 | Model #: PS-750B

Thanks for clearing up the dimensions. I think the 1/2" plastic, 2 nail staples or clips are a little too large (width and depth) to adequately secure the wire. I've seen those around and passed on them. I really like the U-nails with the plastic insulation that were shown in the b2bcableties link you provided, but I have no idea where to get them. The place at the link you provided seems to be a manufacturer.

Check out McMaster Carr; cable tie mounting pads. They are available with adhesive pads for mounting on smooth surfaces. Some are also available with mounting holes. They accept cable ties to mount any size cables. wire bundle harnesses or even tubing.
They can also be found @ electric supply outlets like Greybar or electronic outlets as has been mentioned above.

I considered using the pads with the adhesive, but I'm uncertain how well they'll hold up since they'd be used in a detached garage, which is unheated most of the time. They would also have to be stuck to older wood and I'm not sure how good that would be. I'm going to look around at a couple more places today. If worse comes to worse, I've been thinking about opening up those 3/16" Gardner-Bender 1-nail plastic staples. I may be able to take my jigsaw, mount it in my vise upside down, and trim a blade width or so out of the slot. It may be a PITA, and I'd have to do around 30 or 40 of them, but it may work if I can't find something else.

 

[ogberi]

Probably not, 100 watts is not that much. Well 100 watts tube driven now that would be loud as hell. 100 watts tube driven can literally injure you.

Heh. A few years ago I splurged and built a *very* nice tube amp for myself. It's heavy, hot, and inefficient, unless you're using it as a space heater.

I used a 12AX7 as the input tube, and a pair of EL84 tubes as the outputs, in self-inverting push-pull operation. It makes a staggering 11 watts per channel.
Piped through a pair of Pioneer speakers (18" woofer, 4" midrange, 1" tweeter per cabinet), it is loud enough to run you right out of the house. My neighbor was amazed that 11 watts per channel could reach 'bleeding-from-every-orifice' volume levels. Quite a bit of money tied up in the amp, but it was a thoroughly enjoyable project.

Here's the shelf behind my desk at work. I have some of my collection on there. From left to right:
833A transmitting tube. This one was abused when I bought it (for display).
RS1026 - This tube has a graphite plate, and I've pushed it to bright orange-white hot, about 2kW output. (RF, not audio!)
4PR60B - This is a pulse-duty tube, .001% duty cycle. 20kV on the plate, 18A peak pulse current. It's good for about 20kW for a *VERY* short time. Scary tube.
4-125A - Eimac power tetrode. Used mainly in RF amplifiers, this one has a busted filament, so it's a display-only model.
826 - an original RCA tube, it works, but is rather delicate.



I used to have an old Russian GU10A tube. Big water-cooled beast, 7.2v 80A filament. That beast was good for 10kW continuous, and was absolutely *terrifying* to work with. The tube was about 12" long, around 4" in diameter, and weighed better than 5 lbs. Closest image is an import clone. I think it's name is appropriate, because it will mess you up. The big copper cylinder is the anode (plate). In reference, the 833A tube is about 4.5" in diameter, and 8" tall.


Sorry to hijack, but I really like tube gear.

 

[coolidge]

Heh. A few years ago I splurged and built a *very* nice tube amp for myself. It's heavy, hot, and inefficient, unless you're using it as a space heater.

I used a 12AX7 as the input tube, and a pair of EL84 tubes as the outputs, in self-inverting push-pull operation. It makes a staggering 11 watts per channel.
Piped through a pair of Pioneer speakers (18" woofer, 4" midrange, 1" tweeter per cabinet), it is loud enough to run you right out of the house. My neighbor was amazed that 11 watts per channel could reach 'bleeding-from-every-orifice' volume levels. Quite a bit of money tied up in the amp, but it was a thoroughly enjoyable project.

Here's the shelf behind my desk at work. I have some of my collection on there. From left to right:
833A transmitting tube. This one was abused when I bought it (for display).
RS1026 - This tube has a graphite plate, and I've pushed it to bright orange-white hot, about 2kW output. (RF, not audio!)
4PR60B - This is a pulse-duty tube, .001% duty cycle. 20kV on the plate, 18A peak pulse current. It's good for about 20kW for a *VERY* short time. Scary tube.
4-125A - Eimac power tetrode. Used mainly in RF amplifiers, this one has a busted filament, so it's a display-only model.
826 - an original RCA tube, it works, but is rather delicate.

View attachment 114812

I used to have an old Russian GU10A tube. Big water-cooled beast, 7.2v 80A filament. That beast was good for 10kW continuous, and was absolutely *terrifying* to work with. The tube was about 12" long, around 4" in diameter, and weighed better than 5 lbs. Closest image is an import clone. I think it's name is appropriate, because it will mess you up. The big copper cylinder is the anode (plate). In reference, the 833A tube is about 4.5" in diameter, and 8" tall.
View attachment 114815

Sorry to hijack, but I really like tube gear.

The last guitar amp I built had two Mercury Magnetics transformers, four 12AX7's and four EL34's and pumped 100 watts to a Mesa 4-12 cabinet.

 

[Billh50]

Another thought would be tiewraps that have the eyelet on the end. You can screw the tiewrap to whatever and then tie the wire in.