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Use a utility knife to cut open the wall to look for the speaker wire, if all else fails. Score a small section with the knife, then use a hammer to knock the piece out. The drywall will break on the score lines. Continue cutting until you find the speaker wire.
Can I drywall over speaker wire?
You can drywall right over the wire, and may never use a volume control, but at least if you ever want to install a volume control you could cut into the drywall and the wire would be right there for you.
Can you leave speaker wires in-wall?
Camouflage With Paint And for those who don’t have the option to tuck wire between carpets and baseboards, wires from any speaker may still have to run horizontally along walls, too. Since you’re not stapling the speaker wire, there’s no risk of damage.
Should speaker wire be capped?
If you’ve traced them and found both ends of your wire, there’s no problem with capping them off.
How do I find a wire behind a wall?
According to Popular Mechanics, the best tool for locating wires is a stud finder with AC wire detection. Use painters’ tape around the area you wish to scan; this will serve as a place to mark the location of the wires after detection.
Do stud finders detect wires?
All stud finders do the same basic thing, using either electronic sensors or magnets: They detect where support areas like studs and joists are inside the walls. All stud finders can detect wood, most detect metal, and many also detect live electrical wiring.
How do I find a hidden junction box?
Enter a crawl space or basement door to access the area under the main floor of a building or house. Follow the path of electrical conduits to points where one or more intersect between exposed floor joists to locate junction boxes.
Can you run speaker wire next to electrical?
Keeping power and speaker ~6″ apart is generally fine. If they have to cross, make them cross at right angles. If they do run along side each other for short distances you probably won’t notice anything, but I would definitely not want to do it for the length of a room unless it was shielded cable.
Can you run speaker wire next to each other?
There’s not a safety issue involved, it’s just a matter of keeping the resistance of the wire small relative to the impedance or the speaker for best sound. [edit] Oh, yes nothing wrong with running L & R wires together.
How deep should wires be chased into walls?
The document states that, vertical chases shouldn’t be deeper than 1/3 leaf of the wall, and horizontal chases shouldn’t be deeper than 1/6 of the leaf.
Can you double up speaker wire?
a way round this would be to use 2 runs of the same cable but one with a spade connection and another with banana plugs. this should then allow a doubling of the speaker cable used but a halving (correct ?) of the cables resistance which should result in an increase in performance.
How do I know which speaker wire is positive and negative?
typically, the positive wire is red and the ground, or negative, is black. However, most speaker wires don’t do colors. Good news is, with speakers it doesn’t really matter which one you choose as your positive and which as your negative, just so long as you are consistent.
Can you cut speaker wire in half?
It is perfectly fine and safe to cut speaker wires. However, when cutting speaker wires, you need to make sure they are not connected to any device or power source. Cutting of speaker wires can be done with a pair of plier-style wire cutters or even a knife or scissors.
How do you hide speaker wire in drywall?
Best Ways to Hide Speaker Wire and Audio Cables Use existing room décor. Use cable clips with integrated nails to affix speaker cables to the baseboards in the room. Take advantage of light strips. Route the cables under throw rugs or even the carpet in the room. Stick speaker wire to the wall.
Can speaker wires cause fire?
As Bill said in post #2 , yes, it is possible, but it is unlikely. Amps have protection circuits in them and should shut down in the event of a short circuit. However, if there is a fire unrelated to the wire itself, the wire could give off toxic fumes.
Is 12 gauge speaker wire good?
The lower the gauge number, the thicker the wire. Thicker wire presents less resistance to current flow. Thick wire (12 or 14 gauge) is recommended for long wire runs, high power applications, and low-impedance speakers (4 or 6 ohms).
Can you get a shock from speaker wire?
Speaker wires cannot shock you. The amount of current that passes through speaker wires is very low and not strong enough to cause an electric shock to humans beings.
Can you short out speaker wire?
A guaranteed way to make a receiver or amplifier fail is to create a short circuit by improperly connecting speaker wire to your speakers or receiver. It could be as simple as a stray strand of wire which has come loose from the binding post (on either receiver/amp or speaker) and touched the other terminal.
Does speaker wire get hot?
the wires themselves will not cause overheating. Your receiver is heating up due to the ac impedance being too small, this causes the current in the wires to go up. But the “smaller” wires results in more resistance. (so, with more resistance, you get less current).
