37-690 speaker wire - Printable Version
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+--- Thread: 37-690 speaker wire (/showthread.php?tid=1272)
37-690 speaker wire - wonderwrench - 07-31-2008
What gauge wire is used for the wiring going from the bottom chassis to the voice coils and field coils on the woofer and the two tweeters. Is all the speaker wires the same gauge? They look to be too me.
The reason I ask is I just found out that the wiring going to the left tweeter is in need of repair. I figure I will just replace them all. The holes in the chassis are going to be a limiting factor in choosing the largest usable gauge wire. The conductor measures .030 which if I have it correct is 20 gauge.
The insulation measures .095. The new 20 gauge 600 volt cloth covered wire available at Radio Daze is .120-.125 inches. I question if there is enough room to pass 20 gauge 600 volt wire through the holes in the chassis. I sure do not want to mod the chassis to fit. They do sell non rated 20 gauge wire that is .095 inches. I just can't believe they used such small wire for the voice coil wiring and it freaks me out that they used 20 gauge for the field coils. H**l if I had the room I'd use 10 gauge. So what do you think.
- wonderwrench - 08-02-2008
ping
- Ron Ramirez - 08-02-2008
Hi
The 20 gauge unrated wire from Radio Daze should do just fine for this application. 10 gauge would be major overkill.
This page should prove enlightening.
http://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm
- wonderwrench - 08-02-2008
I figured that was my only choice. I just find it strange that Philco used such small wire considering the low voice coil resistance which will cause higher amp draw than say a 8 ohm speaker would. Then the field feed wires have to handle the load of the complete radio, split between the three coils.
- wonderwrench - 08-04-2008
I was looking at the schematic and the radio it self and my previous statement is all wet. Since the output transformer is on the woofer and the transformer has a 1/4 amp fuse 20 gauge wire would be fine. The field coils are high voltage low amperage so 20 gauge is also fine. The tweeters do not have the output transformers on them. Reason being one transformer is shared between both tweeters so the transformer is in the lower chassis. Since the tweeters only take a small part of the total output 20 gauge should be fine here also.
20 gauge here I come!