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General discussion

speaker wires

Mar 14, 2004 11:02AM PST

Is there any way that a cut in half speaker wire can be fixed? I have a hamster who got out of his cage the other night (my fault, I left it open) and he chewed right through a speaker wire. Please help, I really can't afford new speakers. Thanks a lot everyone

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Re:speaker wires/very easy if
Mar 14, 2004 11:31AM PST

It's a parallel 2 wire system running from a power source to speaker itself. It should be similar to a lamp cord but maybe smaller. If it's coaxial, this is another matter but still can be done. If the wires are detachable from the power source to the speakers, it's as easy as just getting some new wire from Radio Shack or a hardware store, cutting to length, stripping the ends and using connectors from device to device. If the wires are not detachable, you can still just cut off the chewed area (power everything off first) strip back some of the insulation, twist the bare wires together and cover with electrical or even upholstery tape. A better way is to use something called shrink tubing but I won't get into that here for simplicities sake. If the chewed wires are marked for polarity such as one having a stripe on it, you should make an attempt to connect the individual wires the way they came. Now, if the wires are coaxial (one inside the other) they will be round and you need to strip back an outer insulator to a expose a braided wire, slide back the braided wire and then strip back the inner insulation to expose the center wire and then twist and tape it first. You will, then, need to undo the braided wire a bit and twist one to the other and add a second layer of tape. It will look "tacky" but should work. The very best way would be to solder things together and use shrink tubing to get everything neat but this takes a bit of skill. Now, you will need to be sure the hamster cannot get out and take a nibble at an AC power cord or things get a bit worse from here. Good luck.

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Re:Re:speaker wires/very easy if
Mar 14, 2004 11:38AM PST

Thank you so very much for your quick response. These speakers are KOSS desktop speakers with a woofer. It looks to me like there are two separate wires inside the plastic. One end of the wire is still in the speaker and the other end has the adapter or whatever it's called to plug into the the other speaker to hook them up. The hamster chewed the wire almost in the middle in between these two ends. It sounds like I can still fix it from what you are saying to me. Right? I am a woman and am not great at doing this kind of thing, so I hope it is not too difficult. Thanks again. Loretta

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home ec terms
Mar 14, 2004 5:05PM PST

well at risk of sounding sexist lemme use a kitchen approach.

You should be able to fix this by peeling the insulation off the wires at the chew-thru point and re-attaching them.

shut off and unplug everything

Take a good sharp kitchen knife on a cutting board and "peel" an inch or so of the rubber insulation away from the wires inside. kind of like peeling the base of a stalk of asparagus. be careful not to cut the wire itself.

It may not make a difference but we should try to attach each of the 2 internal wires with the one it was originally connected to. I would experiment-- cross & barely twist together each of the bare wires (like a "twist tie" on a bread loaf bag) with its probable mate on the other end, making sure the pairs aren't touching eachother when the power comes on. (separate them temporarily with scotch tape if need be). Turn everything on, and if you have sound, great. if not, turn off and switch the wires you connected.

Once you have a working setup, wrap the exposed wires in electrical tape (available at any hardware store), again, making sure the two lines can't touch eachother.

not seeing the wire itself this is all a guess!
--fj