Anyone have a fish tape?

[Undertoad]

We have to fish two rear speaker wires under 15 feet of apartment carpeting. Is that hard to do? I see where the Home de Pot has a 20' fish thingie for only like 12 bucks. Izzat easy to use?

[gvidas]

I've never fished wire under a carpet. I imagine the padding, and any nails/staples/tape will be the real challenge. Apparently people do it. Hard to beat $12.

Usually that tool is used for pulling wires thru conduit. It's a thin piece of spring steel, rigid enough to push from one end of a conduit run to the other, yet flexible enough to go around bends. If that were what you were doing, I would strongly advise you not to shove the steel fish tape into a live panel.

Hopefully there is no risk of electric shock lying await underneath the carpeting in this apartment.

[zippyt]

Toad , when you buy the fish tape get a roll of electrical tape , tie your wires on then tape them in a tear drop shape , also if your pulling under carpet pull a couple of extra wires , oh and MARK THOSE WIRES !!!!!!!

[Griff]

smrt

[glatt]

I have fish tape, but honestly my preferred fishing device is just a long thin strip of wood or even a few strips taped together to make one even longer. I have so many offcuts from boards I've ripped that I've got lots of these things kicking around. I take a utility knife and just cut them in half lengthwise so I end up with something like 1/8 inch think, 1/4 inch wide, and 15 feet long. Plenty flexible, but also wants to go straight when you push on it.

Fish tape comes on a reel and gets a pronounced curve to it, and you have to try to bend it straight so you can push it straight to your goal. It works, but for me, I can't get rid of the curve in the tape and it tends to want to go off in directions I don't want.

I never did it under carpet. Can you use extra speaker wire and find an easier path? I've tucked speaker wire around the edge of wall to wall carpet so that it goes into the gap between the molding and the tackless stripping. In the room where I did that, it's completely hidden. I just kind of poked it into the corner with my fingers and also carefully used a putty knife. It was super easy. This wasn't half inch thick monster cable though, just speaker wire the thickness of lamp cord.

[glatt]

I was picturing this problem in my head, and this is how I've always found fish tape to behave and what I think would happen if you tried to do what you are describing. I drew a picture.

[Griff]

Its worked ok for me. Just give it more length letting it curve then twist its shell in your little green hand when you want to control direction.

[Undertoad]

I've tucked speaker wire around the edge of wall to wall carpet so that it goes into the gap between the molding and the tackless stripping.

Thinking about it, this is the best option. The room is large and the carpet is new, and has a very deep pad. I'm thinking it'll be too hard to work that line under it across the middle of the room.

[glatt]

I read somewhere years ago that you want to use similar lengths of speaker wire for each speaker so the resistance of the wire to each speaker is the same. So the downside of my method of going around the perimeter of the room is you have one speaker wire that's 30 feet long and the other wire that only needs to be a few feet long. You may want to have both wires be 30 feet long and just have a big coil of extra wire by the one nearby speaker.

Or maybe that article I read was typical high fidelity snobbish bullshit and you can't actually hear a difference with different length wires until you get into hundreds of feet.

[Undertoad]

In this case the rears are $15 plastic speakers, part of a budget Yamaha surround set. And one of them is actually broken right now, because it dropped on the ground and lost all sound, and it's un-repairable unless you take a hacksaw to the plastic. I'm getting her another speaker soon but you get the picture.

[glatt]

At the goodwill and salvation army stores around here, people are getting rid of speakers and real stereos because the kids today prefer ipods and earbuds. Last time I went, they had several nice, functional, name brand speakers for almost nothing. And stereo equipment too. And outlets to test it all.

If I didn't already have a setup, I would have loaded up on equipment.

Maybe it's only here in the rich DC area, but you might be surprised what salvation army has.

[lumberjim]

Yah, good will is always replete with that stuff

[Gravdigr]

Our GW Stores around here only have the kind of supercheap, fleamarket trash audio equipment that lines the walls of every pawn shop between here and Poughkeepsie.