Assembling Nanotec Speaker Cables, a Graphic Tutorial

Here’s a tutorial on how to assemble a pair of Nanotec speaker cables.  It’s pretty easy and requires just a few simple tools.  Check out our upcoming post about what to expect sonically from these cables.  I can tell you, Nanotec have become our most popular cable product ever thus far, including interconnects and power cables.

Let’s get started.

Here are all the supplies and tools you need.  You might also add an X-Acto knife, in case your wire strippers don’t do a prefect job.

Here’s a closer look at the connectors.

Let’s get started by pulling the wires in each cable apart so they can be stripped at the ends.  I did this on the end of each cable about 1.5″ deep.  Note the Directional Arrows on the image above; this is typical of about 40% of high performance speaker cables and some interconnects.  The manufacturer recommends pointing the arrows toward the speakers and claims this will yield slightly better sound.  Some clients have asked us about putting TechFlex sheathing on the cables; while this gives a nice finished look, we don’t recommend putting a nylon product over the cable, because in theory you don’t want a material that can collect static electricity.  For best performance (again, in theory) elevate the cables a bit if on carpet and run them parallel, about 3/4″ apart.

Now strip the wires at each end.  My wire stripper has a lot of very small slots for different sizes, so I put a little piece of tape on the tool, to mark the right size  and easily locate it for each wire.

Note that you can use DeoxIt or other contact cleaner to remove tarnish from your connectors before assembly, but DO NOT wipe or use a contact cleaner on the stripped Nanotec cable ends, because it will wash the nano particles and oil off the copper conductor.

I then slid the connector barrel over the cable and inserted the set screws.  A few things I learned a few things with the screws.  First, they are very small and constantly fall off the Allen wrench, so do this over a coffee table or something where you can easily find them when they drop.  Also, twist them flush with the metal of the barrel, but not deeper.

I added enhancer to the threaded ends of the barrels.

Then I screwed the spade and / or banana connectors onto the ends.

The last step is to tighten the shrink wrap.  Remember the banana and spade connectors screw on at the ends.  If you think you might ever want to swap the spade/banana later on leave the shrink about 1/4″ below where the connector meets the terminal (so you’ll be able to unscrew them).  I used a hair dryer to finish the shrink on these cables.  Even though this dryer is fairly hot I used this pan to reflect some of the heat.  You can also find an inexpensive heat gun, like this one on Amazon, which will also come in handy for future projects.

Wagner Power Products 503008 HT 1000 1,200-Watt Heat Gun

We’re done.  Now we have a new pair of speaker cables that perform in almost the same league as other cables costing 10x as much and far beyond anything else we’ve heard in this price range.