Wiring Speakon connectors

I am going to try an 8 way Speakon connector for the power connector on my next tube mixer project. I have about 12 amps of heater current so I plan to use four pins for these. I have a 12 way 1.5mm cable to use so I thought of doubling up wires on the heaters. This will us 8 wires and the remaining four will carry HT and phantom. This means fitting two wires into each of the four heater pins. I have tried this with one connector and it just about works. You can get 2 x 1.5mm wires in there and hold them while you tighten the tiny screw. But it is very awkward with a dozen chunky wires to fit and I do not feel confident that the mechanical method will continue to retain the wires. So I was toying with the idea of soldering them in. What experiences do people have of wiring up Speakons?

Cheers

Ian

Speakons are not the easiest connectors to wire up if you have more than 4 wires going into them.  If you are using chunky speaker cable into them you need to develop a technique to avoid random strands of the wire being outside of the hole.     

I did a Dolby ATMOS install using them with 46 speakers.  It was fun trying to hook up the speakers in the ceiling up a 6 m scaffold ......

XLR should support up to 16 amps.

Just sayin'...

ruffrecords said:

.... I have tried this with one connector and it just about works. You can get 2 x 1.5mm wires in there and hold them while you tighten the tiny screw. But it is very awkward with a dozen chunky wires to fit and I do not feel confident that the mechanical method will continue to retain the wires.....

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You should terminate two stranded wires with a ferrule first, then tighten it in a connector.

So I was toying with the idea of soldering them in.

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Bad idea.

+1 on ferrules. I use ferrules with speakon and powercon connectors. Screw terminals don’t like stranded wire.  I use ferrules anytime stranded wire meets a screw terminal. The ferrules keep everything tidy.

cyrano said:

XLR should support up to 16 amps.

Just sayin'...

Click to expand...

Data sheets vary. 3 way 3 pole XLR may well do that but 6 and 8 pin ones will not. Plus the 12 amps is the nominal value. Inrush when the heaters are cold would be at least twice that. Strict voltage rating of XLRs is 50V and I also want to poke 250V HT down there. I would love to use XLR but I don't think they are up to it.

Cheers

Ian

Gold said:

+1 on ferrules. I use ferrules with speakon and powercon connectors. Screw terminals don’t like stranded wire.  I use ferrules anytime stranded wire meets a screw terminal. The ferrules keep everything tidy.

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I have never used ferrules. Heard of them but never used them. DO you crimp them on?

Cheers

Ian

ruffrecords said:

I have never used ferrules. Heard of them but never used them. DO you crimp them on?

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I use a Wiha  32945 crimp pliers.

There is also this style: Knipex 97 53 14 Crimping Pliers. They are quite a bit more expensive. It looks like there is less deformation with the expensive ones.  I've never had a problem with the ones I use but I can see how the ferrules might slip into the terminal housings more smoothly with less deformation.

There was a time when speakons included copper ferrules not sure if they do anymore , they were easy to use just slip over the wire then clamp down the grub screw with the ferrule in place .

I got some ferrules and found them easy to use. I don't have a crimp tool so I soldered the wires in. 1.5mm types fit perfectly in Speakons. Problem solved.

Cheers

Ian

ruffrecords said:

I got some ferrules and found them easy to use. I don't have a crimp tool so I soldered the wires in. 1.5mm types fit perfectly in Speakons. Problem solved.

Click to expand...

That's wrong. You should crimp a ferrule.

moamps said:

That's wrong. You should crimp a ferrule.

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I know but I was too keen to get on and try the power supply. It seems to work fine. I had it powering 23 tubes the other night. That is nearly 7 amps of heater current.

Cheers

Ian