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was perfect to use in finishing our basement and providing quality sound to the home theatre system.
It was a huge pain to have to track and mark almost 100 feet of wire using a black magic marker. We looked and looked and looked under several different lights and could not find any difference between the two wires. While there are some reviewers who could make out some sort of line indicating the difference between the ground and hot wires I sure couldn't. Thinking that perhaps I was getting too long in the tooth and starting to suffer from eye failure, I called several friends. So, while this does the trick sound wise, you get what you pay for.
Not much to say here. This stuff is a decent gauge, decent price, and as usual, Amazon's shipping is excellent.I used two rolls of this to hook up 7 speakers for surround sound.As others have noted, it is difficult to see the marking on the one wire, but not a big deal.
and none of the buttons were marked for their functions. In the case with the Philips Spooled Wire - they have done neither. But that's exactly what Philps (practically the inventor of "all things stereo for the home") has done with this product. Or sometimes the plastic casing around the wires help the user determine which wire is which - sometimes one has text printed on it. There is no way to visually tell them apart.I dealt with it by choosing one wire, peeling back the casing to expose the bare wire, and then meticulously tracing that particular wire to its end - and then marking it. It would have been easier to just choose silver or red, make the connection - find the other end and do the same.Had I known this is what the product was like - I would have never purchased it. I've used all types of speaker wire for many years (for many different applications). Usually the wires are recognizable as being two different colors - one is silver and one is red for example.
You may think this is not a big deal - and it isn't if you are running a foot or two of wire - but if you are running 50 plus feet of wire - this becomes an annoyance. It's the same as if Philips came out with a DVD player. Who would've thought speaker wire could be difficult to use. All wire I have seen is in someway marked - so that the user can determine which of the two wires will be used for negative and positive on the speaker end and the receiver/power amp end. Both wires (and the casing they are in) look exactly alike.
(Pun intended. ;))In all, very happy with this wire. Yeah, seemed weird to me too.A suggestion: If you're running several of these lines alongside one another (in a conduit/wall/raceway etc), look into buying some IDEAL Yellow 77 Plus Wire Pulling Lubricant - Wire pulling lubricant. 4/5 of mine had a very light white line, the other one had no marking whatsoever. The wire is braided and both are copper (as noted in other reviews here). I bought 5 spools of this wire in 3 separate purchases, so obviously I think it's worth the cost. My main complaint is that the markings that should show which line is which (the white stripe that should go along one of sheaths) is either very hard to see, or non-existant. It makes things go a _whole_ lot smoother.
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