Customer Reviews

Phoenix Gold CL3 In Wall Rated 16-Gauge Speaker Wire, 50 ft

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm not sure what this other person is talking about because this is top quality speaker wire in white, with an easy to pull jacket. This is the installers choice for speaker wire! And here on Amazon you can get an amazing price as well! You can't go wrong with this speaker wire!

I was really excited to find Phoenix Gold 16g CL3 rated speaker wire at this price, so I jumped in and bought two 50-foot spools. I thought this would be the perfect product for my "baby" surround system in my finished basement.

Boy, was I ever disappointed. Right off, the product did not look right. All 2-channel CL3 rated speaker wire I've ever seen has two sheathed wires, then another external sheath. This product simply looked like white-sheathed lamp wire, and it turns out, it performed like lamp wire as well.

The rear speakers in my setup used 25ft each. The system worked fine when I was just running three channels and a sub, but when I went 5 channels, the receiver would enter protect mode and power off. Initially, I thought the problem was with the receiver, so I went and bought another receiver of a different brand, and POW! Same problem. (I was running bare wire on all terminals, BTW. I removed the banana plugs and pin connectors just to rule them out as the problem.)

After speaking with a friend who installs home theater systems for living, I was informed that if the overall impedance load on the system is too high, many receivers will shut down to avoid overheating. He concluded that this was 99.9% likely due to the speaker wire quality.

I've since installed $.60/foot cable with the system and everything is working fine.

Lesson learned: Don't buy cheap speaker wire, and especially don't buy THIS cheap speaker wire.