chord signature jumpers

[hifi_dave]

Bi-amp speakers is the way the whole bi-wire mess started. Back in the late 70's, some bright spark decided his bi-amp speakers sounded better with a heavy duty cable to the bass terminals and a Litz wire to the tweeter and maybe it did. However, we ended up with the same cable run to LF and HF which sounds the same or worse than a single cable run to the speakers.

What I tend to do is open up the speaker and put the HF wires on to the LF terminals and thereby removing the bi-wire facility. If this isn't easy I strip a couple of inches of insulation from the cable and pass it between the two sets of terminals. If all else fails, jumpers made from the cable work well.

[Macca]

I can only speak from my own experience but I have owned 3 pairs of speakers that allowed bi-wiring - Mission 731 LE, B&W 601 Mk1 and my current Celestion A2s and they all sound better bi-wired. Not night and day better but there was a difference in the sound and I preferred the bi-wire sound.

That's not to say that if I had just used cable for the jumpers it wouldn't sound just as good but its never occurred to me to try it.

[hifi_dave]

Well, there you go.

[Macca]

What?

It was this I was disputing:

' However, we ended up with the same cable run to LF and HF which sounds the same or worse than a single cable run to the speakers.'

[Steve Toy]

That would depend on the impedance of what is connected on either the LF or hF, certainly with valves.

I've found that bi-wiring leads to a more diffuse (perhaps open) yet less involving sound (dynamics, pace and timing seems to suffer). Speakers that don't have twin terminals are better but if they are there, a decent wired connection between LF and HF terminals yields more musical results

[hifinutt]

I can only speak from my own experience but I have owned 3 pairs of speakers that allowed bi-wiring - Mission 731 LE, B&W 601 Mk1 and my current Celestion A2s and they all sound better bi-wired. Not night and day better but there was a difference in the sound and I preferred the bi-wire sound.

That's not to say that if I had just used cable for the jumpers it wouldn't sound just as good but its never occurred to me to try it.

you should try some jumpers, less wire draped across your hearth and sounds as good as biwiring in some cases [imho]

[MartinT]

Another vote here for single cable plus jumpers, not least because the Kimber Select KS-3035 cable I use costs two arms and two legs. I use the matching silver jumpers made by Kimber and connect the main cable in to the bass driver, jumping up to the mid/treble. The Ushers seem to like it that way.

By the way, Dave, silver is the best conductor of all, then copper, then gold.

[Marco]

You'd have a fright if you saw the crap that goes inside the majority of speakers - you really wouldn't use it for speaker cable.

Indeed! That's why my Lockwoods are now wired with top-notch VDH stuff - you should've seen the utter shite that was in there before!

The difference rewiring the speakers with decent internal cable and upgrading the crossover components made was nothing short of revelatory........

Trouble is, you don't think of this kind of stuff when you're using commercial speakers. The fact is, only the most expensive examples (and even then not necessarily all of those) use high quality internal cable and crossover components - out of sight, out of mind, and all that!

I can just imagine the level of improvements that would be gained by those using commercial speakers from opening up the backs and having a peek at what bits are used inside. Chances are that along with a rewire, some cap, resistor and inductor upgrades would bring about massive sonic improvements, and at relatively low cost in comparison to buying a new pair of speakers....

Trust me people, the hidden potential inside your favourite boxes is just waiting to be released!!

Marco.

P.S Make sure that you understand the crossover design though before carrying out any modifications, which means getting hold of the appropriate circuit diagram, and only carrying out the job if you know what you're doing.

[Macca]

Can I add that if you are going to rewire and replace crossover components you might as well put the new crossovers in external boxes away from the 'speakers while your about it as this can also help to a degree. Don't know if you did this with your Tannoy's Marco?

[Marco]

Hi Martin,

No I haven't done that, but it would be very easy to do, as the crossovers are just on loose pieces of MDF, placed inside the cabinets, so these could be brought out and situated externally, no problem. I'm not sure of it would make a lot of difference, though...

Have you heard big improvements before from doing that sort of thing?

Marco.