Wire Comparison

[knukonceptz 10+ year member]

Nice pics, yes the Cadence wire is CCA, your photo clearly shows it. Aluminum on the inside, copper on the outside, that is CCA.

From Cadence website and Amazon, these are the "highlights" of their product description

*High Purity Oxygen Free Copper Standing

*Ultra-Pure Copper Conduction

*Eliminates Noise from the AC Line AC?

*Shielding From RFI and EMI

*Guaranteed to Make Your Amplifier Run Cooler and Sound Better

They are out to deceive clients, there is no other explanation for it.

If the rope specs are accurate, then it does have a larger area then the KLMX 4 gauge, but around 30% smaller then our CCA 0 gauge. If you strip the jacket are there several small ropes within the 7 cores? Looking at the cross section, you see 7 bundles (ropes/cores) these are often made up of smaller ropes. According to Cadence each of the 7 large ropes is comprised of 7 smaller ropes. Its hard to see from the cross section, you would have to strip back about 4-5 inches:

This photo shows DB link pulled apart from the kit review we did and you can see the smaller ropes within the 7 cores

http://www.knukonceptz.com/images/kitreview/db.link.core.jpg

 

[hari-bhari 10+ year member]

i don't have any more free wire but when i get some tomorrow ill take a look. does it make a difference if there are ropes within ropes? i'm assuming it would be wound tighter this way, meaning more wires packed into a smaller overall conducting diameter?

i don't have a set of calipers to measure the diameters exactly, but why does the 4awg klmx cable look almost identical in thickness to this 0 gauge cadence? im thinking to rip it all out again and just go with 0 gauge kca, would this be fine for a 15ft run? im only running about 1500W rms between two amps, and i kept the 4 gauge wire in place from my distro block to my amps.

 

[indytrucks 10+ year member]

The Monster is also little ropes. I like it personally. One of the biggest gripes I had with Knu is the explode when you take the jacket off. Other than thta I loved it. Flexible as all get out. The Monster flexes for poop //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/frown.gif.a3531fa0534503350665a1e957861287.gif

 

[sacsking916 5,000+ posts]

was wondering if you were able to do any of the testing on the audiopipe wire i sent you bro?

 

[puppet_1211 10+ year member]

so would the cadence wire be good to use? and is it awg standard?

 

[CrazyKenKid 10+ year member]

if you want to use CCA then cadence would be a decent pick also a bit cheaper, but why don't you wait for about an hour and I will add 7 more brands to the list! //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif there are a few more alternatives!

 

[The_Grimy_One 10+ year member]

Yippie! 7 more brands!

 

[disturbed471985 5,000+ posts]

so would the cadence wire be good to use? and is it awg standard?

If u consider their 0awg being the same size as other brands 4awg good then yes.. I would run knu cca 0awg over the cadence anyday..

 

[basscort2009 5,000+ posts]

so would the cadence wire be good to use? and is it awg standard?

cadence 1/0 wire is great for the amps that come with the under sized 1/0 or over sized 4 gauge connections such as a crossfire vr4000 with 2 undersized/oversized 0/4 gauge connections. thats about the only thing i would use it for.

 

[disturbed471985 5,000+ posts]

I guess sometimes getting ripped off has its advantages!!! LOL

 

[CrazyKenKid 10+ year member]

Hey everyone thanks for waiting this out for so long. The reason it took me so long to get part 2 of 3 of this review up is Canada post was on strike for a good month and you can imagine the mess that made!

At any rate here we go with part 2 of 3. I will be reviewing these brands in the same fashion as I did previously. Here are the 7 brands

Audiopipe - Supplied by sacsking916 on CA.com

Bullz Audio - Supplied by J@SouthSlap on SSA.com

IXOS - Supplied by Fusetrapper on ebay.com

Kicker - Supplied by Audio4ever on CA.com

Mobilespec - Supplied by yet again Audio4ever on CA.com

Flex-A-Prene Welding Wire - Supplied by faizal_jamal on ebay.com

Shoc OFC (current discontinued) - Supplied by siccostyle's

I would first like to say thankyou to everyone who donated wire to me and or made it very cheap for me to purchase. If you notice I said this is part 2 of 3. Part 3 of 3 will consist of 3 brands, IXOS, KNU KOL, Monster being load tested with a clamp meter and a carbon pile load tester of about max ~500 amps, This will be a two man event more on that later.

Now onto the info!

Subjective review

14. Flex-A-Prene Welding wire wasn't to easy to flex and bend but it was do-able, one thing worthy of mention is there was a cardboard liner on the inside of the jacket it made a cool noise when I cut it. also I noticed that these strands were a lot thicker and were straight. The price on this wire which I found on ebay which was being sold as fork truck/ welding wire was quite reasonable and down to earth, the only down side to it was it had the least conductor OD of all the wires viewed today.

15. Audiopipe, this wire was difficult to bend, and the cost was very cheap! The price I found was on ebay and it came to 1.54$ per foot, but worthy to say the conductor OD was on the average size so this will get an average rating although I suspect this from CCA wiring

16. Bullz Audio was another one of those super hard ones to bend but it was also the cheapest wire I was able to find, with the cost being 1.06$, and Conduct OD was also average on it.

17. IXOS, is the next on the chopping block. This wire is what some would call the holy grail, or rather an infamous wire as it was the most expensive wire I have reviewed. The bend-a-bily of this wire was extremely easy to bend and offered little resistance, and yet again the conductor OD was yet again average.

18. Kicker, yet again another fan favorite, this one was also very easy to bend and the conductor OD was above average here. the only down side was the price tag.

19. Mobilespec, a brand I personally haven't heard of and it was a bit hard to find a price tag on this wire but I eventually did and I got 3.7$, which is a bit high, the bendy-ness of this wire was horrid and the conductor OD was under the average overall this wire wouldn't be my favorite pic.

20. And last but not least Shoc Competition OFC wiring. This wire was very easy to beind and one of my favorites to bend! The price is unknown as it is currently discontinued from what I can tell, and it has the average conductor OD of the wires viewed today.

and to wrap it up have a quick look at this!

Well this has been a long and drawn out subjective review filled with lots of pictures, I hope you all have enjoyed it and I would like to give my subjective top picks and my closing thoughts at this time.

Out of all the wire I was able to play around with my favorite pic from the OFC side of wires was a tie between Knu KOL, IXOS, Flex-A-Prene. These wires will always get my nod of approval because they are easy to bend and they don't cost that much, along with a nice amount of copper in them to support a fair amount of current flow. Any of those three listed above would/ should be able to suit anyone needs.

My top picks for CCA wiring would have to be Cadence and KNU KCA. Both of those wires showed great amounts of CCA in them and very flexible to bend around a tight corner! Again I have never used CCA wiring before but if I ever had to or wanted to switch I would most definitively pick one of those two.

Here is the original for comparison

 

[CrazyKenKid 10+ year member]

Not So subjective review

Just like last time I gut a 6inch section from each brand and cut the jacket off to reveal just the copper and I weighted that copper and displayed my findings.

Based off of my findings with the tobacco sale I would have to pick either KNU KOL, Kicker, RF wiring and IXOS , as they all showed a lot of copper content. But based on price and copper content I would have to pick KNU KOL over all the brands and a close runner up would have to be the welding wire. I would have picked Kicker or RF or IXOS but their pricing is a bit high as compared to KNU or even Welding wire which is an excellent runner up for its 3-3.5$ price range. Also please note that since I did this review KNU has raised there price of the KOL wiring and it is still a better value!

So with this I would like to conclude and say I had a lot of fun doing these reviews a I have learned a lot about 1/0 and how companies will all vary but please keep in mind that the Conductor Diameter of 1/0 wiring should be around 0.325" as per the standards I have read on the web and all of the wires are over this standard. (American Wire Gauge table and AWG Electrical Current Load Limits with skin depth frequencies)

Again I hope you all have enjoyed reading this and maybe learned a little bit along the road! Please feel free to post comments, questions or maybe even ask for a little bit of clarification on certain points I have touched on that weren't fully understood. Like always if you would like to see some more pictures of anything close up or a different angle please just drop me a p/m and I will be glad to help.

Enjoy your day and week

Kenneth

 

[KMS 10+ year member]

I'll be grabbing some Knu KCA. Thanks for the review!

 

[CrazyKenKid 10+ year member]

KMS I am glad you liked it man! spreed the word! and maybe one day this will be stickyed lol!

 

[knukonceptz 10+ year member]

Hi Ken,

Just a quick note about that table you referenced, the diameters listed are for solid wire standards. Stranded wire must be larger diameter to compensate for the air gaps between each strand. Stranded wire 0 gauge according to AWG should be 9.53mm (or .375") in diameter.