Wire to repair Bose 901 speakers

[williebr]

I am in the process of refoaming my Bose 901 III speakers. The earlier thread, Re-foaming Bose 901's helped tremendously but I'm not having trouble reattaching the wire. Rewrapping the wire around the posts is difficult and some of the wire is breaking. I need to replace some of the wire. Does anyone know what gauge wire is in the speakers and if it is just solid wire or something special? Also, any suggestions on how to wrap the wire around the posts?

Thanks

[MikeyBC]

If the wire keeps breaking I'd replace all of the wiring with some good quality 16 or 14 gauge. Not sure what the posts look like but try to wrap it around the post tightly and apply some solder.

[audio amateur]

Using some 16 ga. oxygen free copper should do the trick.

[JohnMichael]

If you are talking of the internal wiring there may not be room to run larger guage wires to the nine drivers. You might want to contact Bose on the possibility of buying a new wiring harness.

[Poultrygeist]

Just order some hook up wire from Parts Express. Most companies use thin gauge internal wire so I'd duplicate whatever Bose used.

[02audionoob]

I don't know my way around BOSE speakers, but wrapping wire around a post requires a specific tool for that purpose. Depending on the gauge of the wire and the width of the post, you might need a custom-sized wrapping tool. The standard wrapping tool like you'd find at Radio Shack is tiny. Another option is to hand wrap as snug as you can and then hit it with a spot of solder.

[luvtolisten]

The wire you have in place is solid, since wire-wrapping only involves solid wire. The only advantage I see wire wrapping over soldering, is that it's cheaper and faster in production..
Soldering is usually a better connection, since there is no chance for oxidation.You would be fine just giving the wires a single wrap and soldering as MikeyBC stated. As AA said, you may go with 16 AWG stranded wire, or 18AWG solid (which I'm guessing is what you had originally, if that).

[JohnMichael]

The wire you have in place is solid, since wire-wrapping only involves solid wire. The only advantage I see wire wrapping over soldering, is that it's cheaper and faster in production..
Soldering is usually a better connection, since there is no chance for oxidation.You would be fine just giving the wires a single wrap and soldering as MikeyBC stated. As AA said, you may go with 16 AWG stranded wire, or 18AWG solid (which I'm guessing is what you had originally, if that).

As long as the temp is low enough that the voice coil is not melted while you solder the connections.

[02audionoob]

As long as the temp is low enough that the voice coil is not melted while you solder the connections.

Be quick

[basite]

get your soldering iron out.

make it hot, do it quick.

16gauge OFC copper will be miles ahead of the original cable too...

[JohnMichael]

get your soldering iron out.

make it hot, do it quick.

16gauge OFC copper will be miles ahead of the original cable too...

His series of 901's have 9 individual enclosures inside the speaker. I can not remember what they called this technology. Since the wire has to be thin enough to feed from internal chamber to another some 16 guage cables will be too thick.

[BCbud]

Good day!

I have been away for a long time and have not finnished the rebuild project yet. I was concidering replacing the stock wire with a larger gauge better quality wire. I was thinking about using a pencill type solering iron to melt the holes between chambers bigger then once the wires where installed, I was going to seal them with some undetermand sealing compound to make them air tight and to prevent the wire from vibrating against the plastic.
I was also going to make them a little bit longer to make installing the drivers easyer but not too long so the wires do not touch inside and vibrate making noise. I was going to solder the wires to the drives but I would use a small set of needle nose vise grips and lightly clamp them to the bottom of the pin. This will act as a heat sink and help prevent the plastic basket from melting. Solder the wires at the end of the pins as far away from the basket as possible and do it quikly but make shure you do not get a cold solder conection as this would defeat the purppous of soldering all together.

[Dawnrazor]

B,

FWIW I am fairly certain that the wire is aluminum. Replacing it with different wire will change the sound...you may like the change but keep in mind that the speaker was voiced with that wire in place. IME aluminum can sound tizzy or somewhat bright. So you may lose some high end that might be needed.

In addition, thicker gauge might not be an improvement. Especially if it is stranded.

And using a different wire like copper will almost certainly mean a mismatch of metals which may not be good sonically. Jon Risch has some papers about dissimilar metals.

[BCbud]

B,

FWIW I am fairly certain that the wire is aluminum. Replacing it with different wire will change the sound...you may like the change but keep in mind that the speaker was voiced with that wire in place. IME aluminum can sound tizzy or somewhat bright. So you may lose some high end that might be needed.

In addition, thicker gauge might not be an improvement. Especially if it is stranded.

And using a different wire like copper will almost certainly mean a mismatch of metals which may not be good sonically. Jon Risch has some papers about dissimilar metals.

I just got home and looked at the stock wires in the speakers and they are tinned copper and the pins on the driver pins are steel so I do not think the mismatched metals was a problem back then and shouldn't be now.

[Dawnrazor]

I just got home and looked at the stock wires in the speakers and they are tinned copper and the pins on the driver pins are steel so I do not think the mismatched metals was a problem back then and shouldn't be now.

Ok. I should have looked closer. YOu have the 3 series. I was talking about the latest. Sorry