Customer Reviews

Raptor S12-50 50-Feet 12 Gauge Speaker Wire (Clear)

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I really like this Metra speaker wire. I needed 12-gauge wire for my home theater setup, and this worked really well. The quality of the wire was impressive, and the price made it even better. This Metra 12-gauge wire is priced much lower than some of its competitors, but it has all the quality I need. Don't believe all of the hype surrounding certain brands like Monster. Just do a Google search on speaker wire quality and you'll see...the only recommendation I would make it to consider buying the 100 foot spool of this Metra 12-guage wire (Part# S12-100). I ended up ordering multiple 50 foot spools because I ended up using 150 feet of this wire. If I had just ordered a couple of the 100 foot spools, I'd have saved some money overall, and had leftover wire for future use. Make sure you accurately estimate how much speaker wire you really neeed before ordering, as it's very common to underestimate just how much wire is needed.

I should have listened to other reviews that noted you do not actually get 50 feet of this wire. My set-up required 46 feet and this came up very short and I was left having to order another "50 feet", meaning I'll be left with loads of extra wire. This is just bad business. Most times you'd get a bit of extra wire; I've never heard of a company selling you less than what's advertized.

Due to questions of the accuracy of the 50 ft spools furnished by Metra, Sherco is now buying large bulk spools and respooling the 50 ft size ourselves. We GUARANTY the 50 ft spool will be 50 ft.

Length:: 0:52 Mins

KnuKonceptz purchased three (DB Link, Pyle, Raptor) of the top ranking 12 gauge speaker wire products listed on Amazon. We measured size of the conductor and length of the cable. Of the 3 tested, none of the cables were true 12 gauge and the Raptor product was by far the worse offender. The true American Wire Gauge rating for the Raptor wire is actually 15 gauge (cable is 0.12mm strand x 175 per conductor) This should either be 0.15mm strand x 189 or 0.12mm x 294 strands to reach an American Wire Gauge 12 gauge standard (3.309mm^2 for stranded wire). Furthermore our 50' spool was only 45' as shown in the video! Looking over other reviewer comments, this was not an isolated incident.

Those commenting "well its cheap and it works", well you are getting shorted 10% of your purchase so its really NOT THAT cheap in comparison to other models! Regardless if you only wanted 40' you are paying for something you did not get! Using the current retail price and divide by 45 we get $0.39/ft! That is not a good deal for 15 gauge CCA speaker wire even keeping in mind that is a delivered price.(assuming you buy $25 worth)

Product details as of 12/7/2011 state Oxygen Free Copper and has a listed weight of 1.6 pounds. 50' of copper 12 gauge wire weighs 3 pounds, that is a fact. The Raptor S12-50 is Copper Clad Aluminum. You can also see this by looking at the cross sectional images supplied, the inside is silver (Aluminum) the outside it copper color (copper clad). Our purchased roll had one side bare copper clad, the other was tinned copper clad aluminum(copper/silver in appearance when side by side) and did not match the main Amazon product photo.

We rate this item 1 star because it delivered nothing that was claimed.

Unless you are a hardcore audiophile, I can't see how you could want any more from your speaker wire. Don't pay too much, just get this stuff. Its oxygen free copper. Its well sheathed. The markings to differentiate the wires are easy to see. It sounds great on my speaker system.

I have a very hard time believing that spending 2 or 3 times this much on similar wire is going to make a big difference over this stuff.

I cannot speak to the length of the cable issues posted here but when I connected these to my new Sony speakers (replacing the stock speaker wiring) there was a noticeable difference. The sound was much warmer, and the midrange presence was more noticeable.

The 12 guage wire was the correct wire guage for our Home Stereo / HD systems. The wire jacket is for in wall runs. I expect to get many years of performance and enjoyment running our 5.1 system with this cable.

Amazon's price was very good; and shipment was fast!

The website says that this speaker wire is "12 Gauge Clear Oxygen-free copper". One of the two wires is coated with a thin layer of copper, the other has no copper at all. Copper coated aluminum (CCA) has nearly the same resistance as pure aluminum.

But even if the tiny bit of copper coating is included (so it might look like copper wire but still be cheap aluminum), CCA has about one third greater resistance than pure copper. It also corrodes/oxidizes/rusts to a different chemical that is an insulator, unlike copper. Also, it is less strong/malleable, so it will break easier.

To use aluminum wire instead of all copper, you should use at least one gauge size larger (from 18 to 16 or maybe even 14 gauge, for example - you can do the cross sectional area comparisons, if you want). This may make fitting the wire into those wire clamp holes difficult or impossible though.

No, you won't hear any difference if you don't buy fat aluminum wiring, it will just make your receiver amplifier work harder, run hotter, and produce less sound for the same work. Want to take a chance on burning one up?

Still more worried about getting a couple less feet of cheap aluminum wire than what you paid for? Buy pure 100% copper - only silver is a better conductor. (side note: know how much better "oxygen-free" copper is for wiring? wikipedia.org says it's 1% or less better than regular copper, depending on which of three different types you might be getting - Caveat emptor!)

My Raptor S12-50 came from Amazon, not a Marketplace seller. I was surprised to find that unlike the wire shown in the main photo for this product (which to me looks like it's all the same color), half of the wire I received is one color (copper) and half is another (silver). Shouldn't exactly the same metal be used for both wires? Some kind of marking to help users avoid mixing up the polarities is useful, of course, but using different metals seems odd to me. If you know and understand this stuff better than I do, please leave a comment and enlighten me. For now I feel comfortable withholding two stars simply because the product package provides no explanation and as a result I'm spending time trying to find one on the web.

The Raptor 12 gauge wire seems fine but, as other commenters have noted, the length is 45 feet, not 50 feet.