Hey, you remember back in the 70's that cheesy, bad acting, terrible effects horror movie called Sssssss? I do, and yes I love it, too. Well I was sitting here trying to think of a title for this webpage and that was what came to my mind. So here ya go, sit right back and you will hear a tale. A tale of a...nevermind, just read on.

Ok, so I was going to build some cat5 speaker cables for a while now. Then on a couple of Sundays ago, I ran across a garage sale where I picked up a partial roll of Acoustic Research "high grade, oxygen free, stranded copper" speaker wire for 50 cents. It was only 18 gauge but I figured I could use it in the garage or on the porch or the whatever.

So, I spent many hours online doing my homework on the various DIY cat5 speaker cable designs and suddenly I thought to myself..."Hey shitbird, why not do something with that AR wire?" Armed with this thought I started looking at various braids people use on cables and why they do it and what their theories and opinions were of the results. One of the most prevelant things that stood out to me about any and all types of briaded wire and cables was the simple fact that I had no clue as to how to braid something, nor did I really want to learn at this point of my life. So I did the only thing I knew to do, I asked my lovely wife Christian if she knew how to braid four strands into one. She answered with a positive and in fact asked me which style or design I wanted. At this point I was way out of my league and pretty much admitted I had no clue and just asked her to do whatever she thought looked best.

Sooooo, I grabbed my wire cutters and had my daughter, Michelle hold the end of the wire as I started to peel it off the roll. We cut the length into 4 equal lengths of which I did not measure so don't even bother asking. From there, Christian and I headed outside to "unzip" the 4 pieces resulting in 8 single strands of "high grade, oxygen free, stranded copper wire" according to AR.

I asked her if she could braid and watch a movie at the same time and she said it would be no problem, so I threw in The Chronicles of Riddick and enjoyed the show. By the time the flick was done, BADDA-BING, BADDA-BOOM, there was a coiled snake at my feet, waiting to spring upon it's unsuspecting prey. "WOW" I thought, these things are shit-hot looking. At that point I mentioned to her that I really didn't care if they were better sonically then the current Wal-Mart 16awg car audio speaker wires I use, they looked great and I thanked her again and again for the effort.

For the cables, I joined two of each of the 18awg strands from the braid, stripped and twisted, and terminated them as follows. Ok, so the cables were braided, now I needed to terminate them somehow nice. I have a set of Rhodium over Silver, banana plugs I ordered from HGA laying here, but I didn't want to use these super nice plugs for such a budget project. I checked online to see what the Radio Shack offers in terms of banana plugs and saw a few I liked. I ran out to the local RS store and decided on these little babies here. Once home I realized I did not want the big plastic end covers and decided to go a different route. They are solderless, but I went ahead and removed the little collar and soldered them using some silver solder from HGA which worked very nicely. Next I applied some heat shrink tubing that shrunk down just perfectly so when I put the little collars back on the plugs, it fit snugly over the shrink tube giving me a nice, clean look. For the receiver end of the cables I went to RS again and picked up a pair of flat pin connectors and I think it gave them a nice look as well.

Once again, I thought to myself I don't care about sonics at this point, these babies are schweeeet looking. So schweeeet looking in fact, in this beholder's eyes that is, I figured I would go ahead and take some pics and throw this webpage on here for you all to have a little looksee.

I will get them hooked up and let you all know whether or not they make difference overall.

If you have any questions or comments, or would like something similar built for you, feel free to let me know via the contact link under the pics.