The Vintage Altec Codex

[junker]

Up to you but I prefer less solder and connections whenever possible. Jeff Day has a trick on the Duelund when he cuts the insulation and slides it up to expose some wire but leaves a small segment of insulation on the wire at the end. He shows it some place on his blog. It's pretty nice.

Originally Posted by fjn04

For insulation, I only did one side (parallel) wall, as junker suggests. I didn't put a square on the ceiling above the horn. I don't get shout of any kind. I have a question about the Duelund 16Awg termination. Parts Connexion does termination. It takes 1 hour for them to terminate a pair of cables with bananas or spades. I just emailed him to get the cost, so I will know that soon. So I will cut to the chase. For my Jagusch crossover, I am using the Belden bare wire on both ends. The connection to the drivers seems pretty good, with the rather large tightening screw. But on the Jagusch, there is a tighter strip with small spacing, and a smallish screw which really doesn't seem to coral ALL the wire. Should I go small spades there, or am I OVER thinking AGAIN?

[fjn04]

It's $60 per hour to terminate a pair of cables, weather it be Banana's, SPADES, or RCA's. Not bad, as far as I'm concerned. When I asked him if people also use the Duelund 16Awg for interconnect, he didn't answer that part of my email. But he's been very responsive, especially with this stuff costing what it does. Anybody using, or know if this as good for interconnect??? It's certainly low risk for me to try it? Should have my order in by tomorrow!

[junker]

Typically the new Duelund 20 gauge would be more typical for signal level wiring.

[Idler]

Josh,

What are you using to replace the small wire inside the compression driver which connects the terminal to the diaphragm? Are you re-using the ring tongue terminals on each end?

Don

[junker]

Oh man.... this is a good question!

Did I bring this up before?? You're right that wire in there is NASTY with plastic sleeve crimp-on connectors.

Well what I did was use Duelund 2.0 foil wire, use a razor to trim back the insulation tap a small hole with a dremel, and thread screw through that. It's very sketchy to do and a lot of work... No solder, no connectors. I was thinking the Duleund 3.0 might be better... but now there is the Duelund stranded tinned 20 gauge that might be good, or the solid core silver...but it's only 26 AWG I believe. Maybe the Mundorf silver-gold teflon would be the way to? 1mm.

This is definitely a weak link and some special sauce can be applied here for sure...

[Idler]

Josh,

Thanks for your update. I will definitely add this to my work order.

Regards, Don

[fjn04]

Good News, Bad news, good news. I placed my order for 12 meters of the Duelend 16AWg. It's Out of Stock, so my order might take a couple of weeks. They now have the 20 gauge Duelend IN STOCK. Josh- I shot an email over to see if they concur with you about the 20 gauge being better for interconnect. If they do, I will buy some SwitchCraft RCA's, and get them terminated by a local friend who is very good at this stuff. So let me take this a step further, and ask here if the 16 gauge would be better than the 20 gauge for speaker wire? Cheers -Don

[junker]

Th Belden ICs use 20 gauge. The signals are not much. For speakers I'd do 16 personally. Stock is 20 gauge but I'd still do 16 like the Belden 9497.

[fjn04]

Thanks Josh. I'm thinking that's the plan. I'm gonna ad a little of the 20 gauge for the purpose of interconnect, and use Switchcraft RCA's for the ends. This way, they are also ok to try in my Shindo system. Like you mentioned, I'm
gonna stick with the 16 gauge for Crossover. At one point in the future, it would be interesting to try this in place of the A23. Not as easy for me, since my components are on the long wall, and I use a 9 meter A23 SC.

[junker]

I ordered 40m of the 16 gauge for the two pairs of 604s. Backordered.