Look at how much you're saving on this cable... use that money to buy one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/Automatic-Wire-Stripper-with-Cutter/dp/B0002KR95W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291499829&sr=8-1
You will NEED it for this cable. The insulation is a real pain, but the stripper makes VERY quick work of it. You'll need to use scissors or a knife to separate the two halves, but I don't have any special product recommendations there, haha.
So, 12ga or not? The PE dielectric thread takes the place of a lot of missing copper, but again, look at the price and compare it to 16ga stranded (without fillers).
The pins that it comes with are very snug when you get them on, and seem to be no better or worse than any other pin. I bought some spring clip style speakers and the pins fit great (as one would expect)... my receiver, on the other hand, will accept bare wire, bent pins (only available from Monster due to a nonsense patent they hold), or real banana plugs. I successfully bent 3 pins to fit them into my receiver posts, but when I got to the 4th one, I broke it, and then ordered a full set of bananas to re-terminate all 9 of the ends at the receiver.
Conclusion: Don't try to make these pins do something they don't want to - only use them with spring clips! I should point out that even if you throw the pins away and just use the wire, its still cheaper than many of the other solutions out there.
VERY IMPORTANT: if you allow your speaker wire ends to touch when the amp is sending power, you're going to have a bad day. Do yourself and your equipment a favor by picking up some 3/8" shrink tubing in various colors so that you can cover these highly conductive pins and color code them. Acoustic Research PR220 Speaker Wire 12 AWG Oxy Free Copper, 30 ft spool
This is a very nice looking speaker wire. The only issue is that the insulation is very thick and hard to work with, but that is what I wanted anyway - thick insulation. Looks like the wire is wrapped around something that is not copper but even though the copper wire is very thick and from good quality copper. I use it for the front speakers only as the wire is very thick and almost impossible to run it to the back speakers. You will have a hard time to fit it in speakers that do not have special connectors like banana plugs for example. I would definitely recommend it though.
I'm not at all unhappy with the wire, as far as I can tell, the sound is as good as my equipment will produce. I especially like the compression pins. What irritates me is having paid $20+ dollars in shipping one year ago and now it's $8.00. If I hadn't been in a hurry, I'd have never done it (I think I missed it while buying many things in a short period). How can they justify the expense and now the discount? Not happening again.
I bought this cable to connect my 2 subwoofers to my home audio system as I did some moving of furniture and my current cables were too short. Home Depot and Lowes did not carry 12 gauge cable which is what I like to use as my subs are pushing 250 RMS watts each and I want to make sure I get solid cable and solid bass. The plastic they covered this cable with is a trial to strip and the two strand is nearly an inch thick, way too thick for 12 gauge cable. The connectors they provided were a complete waste of time, in order to get the connector to stay on, you had to crimp it down so hard you were completely splitting the copper. So once it was connected, if something bumps the sub, the cable would come loose. I ended up going to a car audio store and buying their 12 gauge cable which cost more but was much easier to work with.
I bought this wire because I wanted to have cool looking wire between my wall plates and ny speakers - I don't believe in sound differences between wires of similar size. Mine came with four plugs that are completely worthless - the worst I've seen but I didn't even know I was getting them so no big deal to me.
This wire is gawdy looking and huge. The insulation is extremely hard to strip and there is a huge gap between the two wires that just looks strange. The bannana plugs it comes with are a joke. I would not purchase this wire again. - Speaker Wire - Cool'
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