Normally its a good practice, but I found with this wire it's much easier to leave it clean and untwisted. When you twist it, it puffs up almost a whole wire size. I guess the strands are so tightly packed that when you mess with them, they space themselves out some. GL with the AQ 3500, jealous of the amp bro. Enjoy the SHCA. I give 100% satisfaction to all their stuff I touched. Their 1/0 is awesome, the jacket cuts super easy yet is tough to rip, the shrinks are crazy thick and look nice and clean. I used all of their 14ga speaker wire (really 12ga) and 14 ga remote wire (12ga).. I also used their fuse holders, and their lugs. Only small complaints are the jacket on the 8ga OFC speaker wire..yes I said 8ga speaker wire in OFC. the jacket formula isn't perfect because if you rip those too carelessly the blue side will strip near the wire not in the middle. Also their lugs are thick, which is great... Unless you have honda with no spare space in the engine or on the alternator bolt and have to grind down the lug some to get the nut on the bolt for the alternator positive.