One of my girlfriends had some like 50-year-old Sansui speakers stashed away in a closet, and I wanted to know if they still worked. However, the only speaker wires I had were terminated with banana plugs and I didn’t want to strip them for speakers that I didn’t even know were going to work, so I borrowed some of my girlfriend’s jewelry wire to test:
This totally worked! The speakers play just fine, and they have some kind of built-in bit of reverb that actually sounds nice with swing jazz and soul music. (Though they don’t sound especially good with really busy music.)
However, the jewelry wire may have worried some people in the house, so all this to say… the new speaker wire I bought arrived in the mail today. 