Home audio & video forum: Re-use proprietary Bose speaker wire with "standard" compone

OK, so I rolled the dice yesterday and snipped off one end of one of the Bose cables. There are indeed two conductors inside the sheathing, so presumably it should be straightforward to use these cables for a conventional receiver-to-speaker connection. Mystery solved.

Many thanks for all the feedback.

Best,
-Bob-

P.S.
[I took a photo of the snipped end - if it's possible to post the photo here somehow, by all means do let me know how to do it...]

Yes, you should be able to remove the custom & RCA ends and view/use the bare wire. I believe with the ribbed wire is the (-) and the plain is the (+). Double check the Bose manuals for this though.

It's become very frustrating -- some people are saying that I *cannot* use those Bose speaker cables by cutting off the terminal plugs at each end, and others are saying that I *can* cut off the ends and use the cables with "standard" speakers.

So, who am I supposed to believe????

...take photos of what you have in the walls, including closeups of the ends so we can see and make the call.
(Who/where are these people who are asserting it cannot be done, btw?)

Understand though, speaker wire isn't rocket science. You can use all sorts of 'el cheapo' wires with stereo speakers successfully. Been there, done that (mostly in a pinch when I needed to quickly test a system while I was away from my tools/supplies/etc.).

Take a few quick digital photos, and upload to free sites such as imgur.com. Then, post the URLs of your photos here.

http://imgur.com/

I've had 3 different people at Best Buy all say the same thing: "You can't re-use the Bose wires on "normal" speakers+receiver." I was very explicit in stating that I didn't expect to be able to use the wires as-is -- what I wanted to do is cut the ends off and, assuming that the wire itself was a two-conductor wire, attach banana plugs and connect to the new speakers and receiver...

What's in the wall looks like this on the speaker end:
http://www.frontrowelectronics.com/bose-ac2-bare-speaker-wire-adapter-black.aspx?utm_source=googlebase&utm_medium=cse&utm_campaign=Bose&utm_term=24820&gclid=COyDv7L33bMCFQqe4AodghAAHw

On the other end, it's a standard RCA-type connector

At least not in my experience. They don't work on commission anymore, so the have less incentive more often than not.

Is there a particular reason why you linked to a product online instead of taking a photo of what you actually have on site? Or, what you are asserting is, what you see in front of you is exactly like the black/red speaker wires depicted in the diagrams you've linked to, but without any sort of visible adapter(?)

I linked to the online image because it's a bit inconvenient to get at the wire to disconnect it from the speaker to photograph. The image accurately depicts what the connecter (the black part) looks like - the Bose wire is integrated into the connector, so you can't see what's inside the sheathing. Ignore the red/black speaker wires and the terminal screws in the image - those are used to adapt standard speaker wire for use with the connector for a Bose speaker.

Please discount anything the BB folks say, as most is meant to get you to purchase things you do not need . Your wires are fine for using different speakers.

Happy Turkey Day.

to be that important to someone that has to ask a question like this about the wiring.

...his point was a valid one, no?