New BassChat 8"Cab design

[Obrienp]

So it’s not necessary to use some specialist hifi speaker cable?

[Stub Mandrel]

12 hours ago, nekomatic said:

6 A twin core mains cable would also be fine. 

 

I just always seem to have some around when doing speaker things...

[Bassybert]

The only cable I use is ultra low capacitance, oxygen free, double wrapped with Kevlar, a gluten free hemp covering and the copper was mined on a Tuesday. It’s the only stuff I use. 

Edited Saturday at 15:18 by Bassybert

[Phil Starr]

On 05/12/2025 at 11:58, rwillett said:

Solder speaker wire to the speaker <-- What size wire is OK for 250W? I definitely have AWG16 and might have some thicker in a box somewhere in my basement. I've heard AWG 14 should be used

all the answers are good. The thing is that you really don't need to oversize. The resistance of the cable is going to be close to zero because you are dealing with a really short length. As to power handling you hve to remember the speaker is playing music not continuous current. Most of the time there is little or no signal and any note you play decays quite quickly. It's normal to think in terms of a duty cycle of 15-20% but that is allowing for a considerable safety margin, under 10% might be more 'real world' use so 20W for your 225W speaker would be a more reasonable rating. 

 

The voice coil of your speaker is wound with hair thin copper wire only slightly thicker than the strands in your cables and that doesn't burn out in normal use. Like @Stub Mandrel I use a couple of cores from any mains cable laying around most of the time, even 1mm lighting cable is plenty big enough. The reason speaker cables use thicker wire is to keep resistance to a minimum on longer cable runs. That's not relevant for the 40cm wire inside the cab.