star grounding wire question

[antonlamont45]

when doing a star grounding system, will 12 awg stranded speaker wire work ok? or should i look for solid copper wire? i've read suggestions to use solid copper wire, just wondering if the speaker wire is ok before i buy a bunch.

[Professor]

It will be cheaper if you just go to an electrical store or to Home Depot and buy a roll of solid or stranded 12 or 10AWG single conductor wire which should only run about $0.10 per foot.
Since you're not running the ground for lightning or surge protection, but just for a unified ground in a studio (I presume) then you're OK with just about anything, although the idea is to make certain the ground line is a "more attractive" conductor than the shield or ground on any of your audio cables. For that reason, it should generally be thicker than any other wires in the system, and stranded 12 or 10 AWG A/C power cable will have thicker strands then speaker wire.
A ran stranded 6 AWG wire around the school studio for a star ground system but it's still not entirely terminated because I didn't end up having any grounding issues with the patchbay.

-Jeremy

[sonicmook56]

Better than no ground! What is this for?

If you think you have ground potental problems in say, a low voltage mic pre (+/- 18vdc or so) I would use it.

If it was a weird antique monster tube amp, I would shop around.

[sonicmook56]

The profesor keyed in before I finished my last post...

I was thinking of gear not rooms.