GS Power 18 AWG (American Wire Gauge) CCA Primary Wire | 50 ft Red & Black | Also Available in 14 & 16 Ga

I bought this wire b/c it states it's copper and the reviews are pretty good. I used it to wire up headlights and tail lights on my 4runner. After about 3 months, the lights started failing (led headlight strips first, then tail lights) and I couldn't figure out what was going on. Turns out, wherever this garbage wire was used it had 'hardened' up significantly and was brittle. It would just snap when you touch it. Notes on my install - the wire was well insulated against weather and I'd used liquid electrical tape and regular electrical tape in different places. The wire wasn't in the engine bay and the wire that failed on the tail lights was on the non-exhaust side (not heat-related in other words). No matter what I used to insulate it, it failed. The red seems to fail more than the black but both fail.Don't buy this unless you like re-doing your work. The way I'd put the truck together, taped and loomed everything, it's a real pain to go back through my wiring b/c these guys are selling garbage wire.

It is very cheap, and a very thin copper coating. However for 7 bucks it's actually not that bad. I saw complaints of people saying it's impossible to solder, well it is not and the solder flowed on the wire almost instantly. Maybe they got a bad batch or are using to high of a temp or simply don't know what they are doing but the 2 spools I received are fine. I would never use this wire for anything that requires high voltage or high current, will most likely use it for some of my test fixtures that always have wires breaking on them regardless of quality. The resistance of each 50ft spool is a half ohm, as far as the insulation goes only time will tell.

This is good wire, but it is difficult to strip without pulling apart a lot of the individual wires that make up the core. I found the best way to do it is to use an auto-stripper that grips the wire with one side and uses a blade to pull it apart rather than doing it by hand. They're like $5 at Walmart if you don't own one. I also found it is easier to strip it in 1/8th inch sections moving back until you've stripped the length you need rather than stripped a lot at once. I used it to hard wire a dash camera. Works well.

I'm not a speaker fanatic who thinks he can "hear" differences between wires, but there's no doubt that woofers, especially subs, draw more current than tweeters and mids. Most hook-up wire I use inside speaker boxes is cheap 20-gauge stuff, which works fine for normal listening levels, considering it typically only runs about a foot. But a couple of my more recent projects use, in one case, a pair of large woofers, and in the second, a big powered subwoofer. Anything heavier would be too big to solder into the little holes on crossover circuit boards, but I don't want to lose any power to my woofers, which are pretty inefficient to begin with. So this wire is about perfect. Black are red are the only colors needed for audio purposes, so I don't understand the multi-colored stuff marketed to speaker builders.

I have ordered this type of wire at least twice. CCA means Copper Clad Aluminum, meaning its aluminum wire with a copper coating. This CCA has a indicator mark per foot of wire & a good strand per inch count. Pure copper has a higher amp capacity to gauge rating,but U often will pay more. CCA is good for many auto wiring jobs when your amperage requirements are nothing extreme, or just go with a bigger gauge of CCA then U would with pure copper. I have soldered many thousands of times, & find this nearly as easy as soldering pure copper strand.