Hi... I am after some advice on speaker leads. We are a guitar duo using a Soundcraft Gigrac with JBL Eon 1500's, we have been looking into getting speakon leads to replace the Jack leads we use. After looking into this there are many options avaliable. 2 core, 4 core, 1.5mm, 2.5mm with obvious price difference's through the range. Can anyone tell me, would there be a big difference in sound quality from one to the other, as the prices range from £10 a lead to £60 a lead, or would we not notice much from the jack leads we are using now?
Any views would be a great help.... Cheers in advance.

I doubt you'd notice any difference in sound providing the jack leads you're using are reasonable quality.

The main thing about speakons (as compared to jacks) is there are various wiring options for more complex setups, and they don't jum out of their socket if someone tugs or trips on the cable.

Regards,

Mike

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www.ehsound.co.uk - Live Sound Hire & Services

The 'standard', if there is such a thing, is 4 core 2.5mm cable. Basically it will handle plenty of power and having 4 core cable is the norm on systems with active crossovers before the amps.

You probably don't need 4 core, cable. That said CPC do a pretty nice cheapo 4 core speaker cable that's about £40 for 50m. Get some of that and stick your own plugs on.

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need to get rid of this stupid sig...

Speakon connectors are not used to improve sound quality. They are used to increase the durability of your cables and to decrease the time and amount of thought needed to set up a complex PA system.

Increasing the diameter of the conductor will increase the power handling of your cables. If you get the smaller cables then you will save money and weight. However, if you upgrade your PA system then you will need new cables.

Speakon 2/4/8 are used depending on how many channels of audio your PA system needs.

Four-way speaker systems will use NL8 connectors. Each speaker box will use an NL8 connector but only use the pins needed. It will then "pass through" the other pins for linking on to the rest of the speaker boxes. For example, you have three boxes, sub, bass and mid/top. You can run one cable to the sub box, and then just use smaller "link" cables to run from the sub to the bass, and then the bass to the mid/top. The sub box will use pins 1 and 2, the bass box will use pins 3 and 4, the mid box will use pins 5 to 8 (two for the mid and two for the high).

Similarly, bi-amped wedges will use NL4 connectors. Pins 1 and 2 get used for the LF while pins 3 and 4 get used for the HF.

The kit you have uses NL4 connectors but I believe that only pins 1/2 are being used. What you could do to reduce the amount of cable you need is:
Make up a pair of small boxes with three NL4 connectors (A, B and C). Pins 1 and 2 from A go to pins 1 and 2 on C. Pins 1 and 2 on B go to pins 3 and 4 on C.
At your GigRac you take a pair of small NL2 cables from the amp outputs to connectors A and B on your box.
Similarly, at your speakers you get some NL2 cables and go from A to one speaker and B to the other. You then use one long NL4 cable to connect the two boxes together (using connection C) and you just need to run one speaker cable instead of two.

also...

speakons are a shrouded plug, you can't get yer mits on the contacts and they won't short out to any metalwork they might meet if disconnected from their cabinet.

trust me, once you get above a coupla hundred watts, amplifier outputs can bite.

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planet nine
lincoln, uk.

>trust me, once you get above a coupla hundred watts, amplifier outputs can bite.

I can attest to that....

Just recently had a bridged 600 watt Macrotech unload into my hand curtosey of a badly wired patchbay that the outputs were connected to....

I should have died from electrocution more times than I can count this past summer.

Seablade

Gets up to a reasonable voltage with a fair amount of amp behind it, especially with a sub amp.

Unless you're bi- or tri- amping you won't need four core cable or four pole speakons (which is good as four core cable is ridiculously expensive).

Get yourself a reel of 1.5mm 2 core mains cable (should cost around £40 + VAT) and some 2 pole speakons and make your own. Positive goes to 1+ and negative to 1-. Along with a colleague I wired up two PA systems (1 biamped 8k rig and 1 triamped 30k rig with 4k of flown delay) this way, including wall boxes so that nothing is hardwired.

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Gear List: reverse only.

Actually for me at least the difference between a 2 pole and 4 pole speakon connector is a couple of pennies(US) so I would say even if only using it for 2 conductor wires get the 4 pole connectors, makes it cheaper to upgrade later and are easier to find;)

But check the price near you and make sure that they are similarly priced near you. If there is a large difference make the call on wether it is worth it for you to save that money.

Seablade

For what you are using the system for, 2-core 1.5mm2 cable with Speakon connectors will be sufficient. You will probbaly find that the standard shop pre-made Speakon cables invariably come with a 4-pole Speakon connector with only the 1+ and 1- connections made. Once you start using longer speaker runs or higher powers, then you need to use the 2.5mm2 cable, but for pubs and small clubs 1.5mm2 is more than adequate. One of my PA options is a similar setup to yours with a Spirit Powerstation 600 and Mk 1 JBL EON 15s. I've got bought 1.5m2 Speakon leads for general use and a long 2.5mm2 lead I made up for when one speaker is a long way from the desk.

Speakons are easy to make up yourself - you don't even know how to solder! As long as you can bare the end of a bit of wire and can read, all you do is push on a copper sleeve, stick the end in the right hole and do up an allen bolt with the allen key provided (and not forgeting to pass the clamp bit of the connector over the cable first). As has been said before, standard flexible 1.5mm2 or 2.5mm2 2-core mains lead is fine for the purpose and you can get Speakons eaily from Maplin, RS, Studiospares and other music shops.

Behringer use the Speakon connections in a slightly different way with some of their kit - especially their sub cabinets and with these you may need to make up your own leads if you want to bypass the sub's internal crossover if you have an external crossover and are feeding it an already high-passed power signal. As always, it pays to read the manual first.