Heater wire choice

[MoparWade]

Getting ready to wire up the heater and I see that Hoffman sells 18awg solid core cloth jacket wire specifically for this. However, I have tons of leftover 18/10 sprinkler wire. It is solid core but the jacket is fairly thin PVC. Any reason I should avoid using this? I'll be running 4 6l6 power tubes, 4 12AX7's and 2 12AT7's.

[eleventeen]

18 awg is thick enough so that you'll struggle with it, either solid or stranded. The ONE place where heavier wire might be called for is ONLY feeding the big 6L6 tube heaters, and from there on, to use one gauge lighter. But this usually goes AWG 20 to the 6L6 and then 22 to the 12AX7s.


The low voltage wire you speak of will work precisely like wire. But it can't be said to be ideal. Arguably it is wrong to use "low voltage" wire for carrying 450 volts. I know what you are referring to, if I didn't have a preference for physically thicker insulation I would probably use it and have it work fine. Some of us like thicker insulation because in a Twin Reverb 100-watt type amp, the thing heats up and cools down a lot of times and is handled roughly and 45 years later, we like that extra measure of whatever.

[MoparWade]

I have some of the alpha wire that Hoffman sells in a solid core 20awg. This sounds like it will work just fine for wiring up the heaters then. Plus it has a little thicker jacket.

[eleventeen]

You may also find that the insulation on low voltage wire melts back from solder joints more than one would like, of course depending on how much firepower your particular soldering iron has and how quick you are, in general. Big melt-back on solder joints looks pretty cruddy and amateurish, IMO.


It matters, too, if you are working on a brand new build with brand new parts, versus working on an old something or other. Usually, older gear has lightly corroded or highly corroded solder joints, big ones, and you have to throw a lot of heat into them to add to an existing joint. Easy-melt insulation makes this difficult.


There's nothing stopping you from using it; it just makes it a bit harder to make good looking solder joints. The metal conductor of the wire will work like wire perfectly. The insulation is a bit problematical.