[QUOTE=The Devil]cont page 94 [/QUOTE] You read to much Private Eye.
The red coating will not ware off under normal conditions. The red coating can be scraped off with a sharp knife, yet a sharp knife would also cut any typical cable as well, so they are just are durable as any other speaker cable. From the description this sounds like a red enamelled copper wire – of the sort often used for winding onto toroid cores. Commonly referred to as magnet wire.