Bananas rule, spades drool. End of discussion.

Large speaker cables are a problem?  Really?  Not to my ears.

……got the time to check on the spades …..rock solid on my Verity’s which use Furutech and rock  solid on my Accuphase amp. So my spades rule …..

TL;DR, but this (loosening spades) speaks to a much larger problem - the audiophile's fascination with garden hoses for speaker cables.

... Thom @ Galibier

TL-DR - But low mass BFA style bananas are my favorite. Logically, they just make sense. They have a high rate of contact, they are sprung, so they put a constant outward force on the inside of the binding post, and they are inexpensive. In fact, they fit tightly enough and maintain enough outward force that you wouldn't even need to tighten the binding post and they would be just fine. But tightening the binding post will just further insure they do not get loose and fall out.

My first encounter with BFA style banana plugs were the Nordost Z-plug. I later learned that they were just low mass BFA style banana plugs and are actually very inexpensive to implement. I've since built many different speaker cables using inexpensive BFA style bananas and my current "no frills" Audioquest cables were built by Audio Advisor using BFA style bananas.

My opinion - They are the best value in speaker connections. Maybe even better than bare wire as they do provide additional mechanical grip due to being sprung. They put constant outward pressure on the inside of the binding post hole. No need to worry about how much torque you've put on the binding post nut.

OK, Rhodium is off the list. 

Presumably the copper needs a periodic Deoxit wipe. I have done that before when using bare wire to degunkify.  

Looks like it's "Hi-yo, Silver, away"! 

OP:

IMHO, rhodium should never be considered.  It's just too hard to grip well and doesn't conduct very well.  Gold had the least oxidation, but I love me the silver plated one's. :)

Pure copper is a great choice, but will require regular maintenance.

OP Erik - I always enjoy your informative and well-informed posts. Thanks! 

There are 4 metallurgical options on the Viborg link you provided, 

Each one has a brief summary as follows: 

1) Gold Plated - 【Enhanced Sound Quality】

2) Pure Copper - 【Superior conductivity】

3) Rhodium Plated - 【High-quality construction】

4) Silver Plated - 【High-quality conductivity】

danmar123's reply above compared silver plated and pure copper, preferring the latter. 

What's best for sound quality? 

Over to All... 

Thanks again, 

Ken

By the way, hope you all know I'm not unhappy if you like spades and have never had a negative experience with them.  😁

After seeing this thread, I went and inspected my spade connections on the speakers and amps. My amps are McIntosh and they provide a handy wrench. None of my terminals were loose after two years. McIntosh uses very good terminals and I have very good spades on my speaker cables from Morrow.

but from my in depth studies on a dozen other things that shouldn’t matter, but do… little stuff that other folks with more experience than I recommend that don’t cost much, I’ll just do. Not worth the hours of fiddling to figure it out.

I agree--no argument here.

@immatthewj

Yes, me neither, but from my in depth studies on a dozen other things that shouldn’t matter, but do… little stuff that other folks with more experience than I recommend that don’t cost much, I’ll just do. Not worth the hours of fiddling to figure it out.

Yes, most speaker manufacturers put finger friendly devices that a wrench will not fit. I have Sonus Faber… oblong tighteners that the tightest would be to use your thumb to help turn. 

I have been told many times by folks more knowledgeable than I that the best sound is from finger tight connection and using more will degrade the sound.

I cannot comprehend why that would be, but there is a long long list of stuff in that category.  And maybe that would explain why B&W did not use hex heads for their binding posts. 

I have been told many times by folks more knowledgeable than I that the best sound is from finger tight connection and using more will degrade the sound. I have never gotten curious enough to test this. I tighten just enough to stay on… which means over time they loosen. Hence occasionally one falls off when I straighten the cables.

Just the opposite for me. I prefer spades.

It is true that some can’t avoid spades. My suggestions in those cases are:

• Consider WBT with the spring loaded spades
• Avoid rhodium at all costs (it’s too hard and poor conductor)
• Stick to soft spades, pure copper cores with gold plating for instance
• Avoid brass, again, too hard.
• If your binding post is not captive (most are) use a lock nut

The softer the spade, the more it will squeeze under compression and provide for a tighter fit. The harder the material on the spade and binding post the less likely you are to have a long term reliable connection.

As mentioned, my Wilsons, with their big pretty hex heads, don’t accept banana connections.  Their latest model terminations now do.  And they sell them as expensive replacements.  Supposedly sound somewhat better.  Even my dealer thinks I probably have better things to do with that amount of money.  So not in the cards for me either, though tempting.  Wrench on my friend. Enjoy.

They're heavy brass, not good.

That link was onlty to illustrate what my binding posts look like.  I don't know what B&W actually used.

They're heavy brass, not good.

@coppy777  , here is a picture of kind of what mine look like.  I did the search for that AQ wrench you mentioned because I was thinking that maybe it was machined to match those (what I am referring to as) knurls that B&W used on my binding posts.  I guess I could replace them with better posts (like maybe Cardas?) but one of my fatal flaws is probably laziness, and once I have the spades attached and satisfactorily torqued, it's kind of like "out of site/out of mind."  As I typed earlier, however, on the rare occsions that I do have to mess with them, I always wish that they did have hex heads.  I guess I could by a set of eight (I am biwired) Cardas(?) posts with hex-heads, and next time I have to remove the speaker wire spades I guess I could then change them . . . I guess I could do that. . . .

Matthew,  I must defer to your professional skills. B&W and their knurls are a bit of a mystery though.  Years ago I had some Nautilus 800s and have no idea anymore how the speaker cables attached.  

Enjoy the music.

Vice-grips on your binding posts?  Really?  Must do wonders for resale.  AudioQuest makes a great hand wrench that fits both terminal sizes.

@coppy777  , I just did a quick google on those and found a picture on AA.  Unfortunately, my B&W binding posts do not have hex heads, they are round heads with I guess what would be referred to as knurls on them.  I am a retired mechanic, so I have an excess of sockets and wrenches, and if they did have hex heads that would make my life a lot easier; as it is I use a pair of small channel locks to give them a tweak with after I hand tighten them.  I assume that B&W did not use hex heads because they felt that folks would be smoking them down and stripping them out.

Vice-grips on your binding posts?  Really?  Must do wonders for resale.  AudioQuest makes a great hand wrench that fits both terminal sizes.

For my speaker cable, prefer bananas on the amplifier end as I need to swap + and - for a phase reversal.  Spades on the speaker end is all Wilson will accept.  

However, the silver spades on the big Wireworld Platinum cable are soft and sometimes break off when moving the speakers around.  Keep a bag of replacements.  Oh the problems of affluence.

My Audio Art speaker cables have locking 🍌 plugs.  They ain’t goin nowhere!

I was using the nakamichi bananas for years until I tried the Viborg connectors. I experimented with the pure copper/silver plated & the pure copper ones. To my liking, the pure copper was a winner with my system. 

Anything I diy gets 5 way posts for being 'enough for any reasonable situation posed'...Bananas if that given line is meant to stay that way semi-permanently...

If it's 'temp', I goes naked; Longer than 'temp', but meant to stay put, I'll tin the nudity....put a spade on it if it's on/off alot....

Banana fan for awhile now, beats screwing around, literally...

...and certainly more to access excess upon....*L*

Do whatcha' do....

@carlsbad2

I actually just ordered a few gold plated copper wire ends - if that’s the proper English term - to experiment with that.

Great minds think alike, and all that. 😉

Thank you for the advice!

@horstmann I didn't mention low mass since most here don't consider that.  Since you do I'll share that I make my  own low mass binding posts by pressing an OFC copper tube through the center of a bored out 3/8" threaded nylon rod. Perfect match for the low mass BFAs.  PM if interested in the details.

I also agree the simple BFAs seem indestructable.

Jerry

Hmm….  Not if it’s the type of banana plug that spins.
Then one always has a loose compression connection. 
 

if you tighten your spades enough so they don’t loosen it is a much tighter connection then a banana plug. If the spades loosen this is a poor user issue.  

I checked my spades (2 spades on the amp end in combination with 2 bananas and 4 spades on the speaker end) tonight, and they were tight.  It's been at least two or three years since I messed with them at either (amp or speaker) end.

Both bananas and spades are useful to me, depending on the given connection/reconnection need(s). One’s for eating, one’s for gardening, so to speak.

I think no need for absolutism in this area. 😉

Amen to that.  I have been dealing with these while. My speaker terminals are up high.  I had bananas bend at the shrink wrap from the weight of the cables so sent them back and had spades put on them.  Wont stay tight.  I found some right angle banana plugs, fancy Rhodium coated ones.  Then the tighten and you can't pull them out and no weight hanging and bending of cable.  Worthy topic, thanks

Spades are usually preferred. When I got my stealth audio cables terminated in banana however, they felt very confident about their specific banana process

In the past they recommended spades but their new process bananas perform 100% as good as the spades, both tested sonically and in measurements. They also bi-wired the ends for me and apparently the bass section is doubled up

I much prefer banana they come out cleanly from the speakers and its easy to make the quick turn

If I was buying a random brand though I would probably look at spades unless I was guaranteed on performance

Well, not sure if the Viborg bananas I linked are "regular bananas" but they are just as tight today as they were when first used. They also take up less space than the locking kinds.

As mentioned, love WBT for locking types, and boo on Furutech, but maybe I got a fake set?  Send me a complete set of 12 pairs of bananas so I can fully evaluate them again... :D

Recently I finally discovered the reason I was having problems.  It was because there are different sizes of spades and I didn’t have the right size for my binding posts.

Well, no offence, but not using the correct size of spades (for decades?), or not being able to use pliers to loosen an overtightened nut, that doesn't disqualify spades - it's a different kind of issue.

As for regular banana plugs, what are we talking about?
If it's the multiple spring type, those are more for convenience than performance, as they get loose over time, and are not a tight fit to begin with.

As said above, personally I don't use plugs at all when possible, and basic hollow BFA plugs when I have to.

For convenience and performance, maybe some of those locking plugs are decent, if they don't require soldering, but they still are a big lump of metal and pricey if you want to get the good ones.

I vote for regular bananas.  I was using spades for decades between amp and speakers and once in awhile one of the speaker wires would come loose and fall off my amplifier. Recently I finally discovered the reason I was having problems.  It was because there are different sizes of spades and I didn’t have the right size for my binding posts.  The spades were too big with the result that when I tightened down on them there wasn’t much spade real estate to clamp down on.  I’m not really fond of the locking bananas that seem so popular these days and that’s what I wanted to avoid.  Why?  To illustrate, a friend gave me a Sony AVR just a couple of weeks ago and he  helped me install it.  He was the one that tightened the locking bananas.  I decided against keeping the AVR and could not open the locking bananas.  The spacing of the binding posts was very close and I couldn’t get a good grip on them with either my fingers or any tool for the same reason, the right spacing.   I had to wait days before a handy male showed up who was stronger than I am and he was finally able to loosen them.  So I will repeat myself to say I prefer regular bananas.

The absolute best it to hard wire everything, no cable ends or connectors, even wire the speaker lead directly to the speaker wires, just support them really well.

Obviously this is not a good option for most and I do not do all of it though I might someday just to see if I can tell a difference, which I suspect will be so.

The less stuff in the chain the more pure the signal simply has to be and properly done crimp connections can be better than soldered ones, less to go through as they are basically welded together.

Rick

I like bananas and rice krispies for breakfast!!!!

except da bomb sounds worse than a gas tight low mass spade with a quality binding post, better yet ring terminals….

Cardas not only makes absolutely excellent connectors, they are super nice people to deal with.  I absolutely support their work.  Still, you shouldn't need a super fancy Cardas spade connector to get reliable. 

I mean, sure, there are amps with Cardas or Mundorf or some other high end socket for spades, and they're great at their cost.  For the rest of us though, da banana is da bomb-a.

Now I guess I am going to have to go back and check my spades.

(I am bi-wired, so at the amp end I actually do have a pair of bananas and a pair of spades.)

But I cannot ever recollect any of my spades coming loose.  I tighten them as tight as I can get them by hand and then give them a tiny tweak with a pair of pliers.  I wish they had a hex head, but I guess the reason that they don't is because people would be going ballistic and over-torquing and stripping?

Having to use channel locks kind of proves my point.  I mean, sure use them if you want to, but knowing you must use them because the spades will otherwise come loose is exactly the problem I'm happy to avoid by using excellent bananas.

I’ve had trouble with spades coming loose.  I finally learned to use channel locks on them.  More recently I discovered that there are different sizes of spades!  I learned that mine are way too big for my binding posts.  The spade prongs are too wide apart and the binding posts barely  grab them.  I finally switched to bananas and thinking locking bananas bananas were superior to bananas, I chose the locking sorts.  I have come to dislike them because I struggle to loosen them when needed.  Just last weekend I had to wait for a male visitor that I could ask to loosen locking bananas for me..  I had been given an Audio Video Receiver and the male who gave it to me tightened the locking bananas.  The binding posts are so close together I couldn’t get a good grip on them nor would the channel locks fit in either so I was really stuck.  It’s actually a challenge to find regular bananas on speaker cables.

I’ll chime in with a comment on this topic.  I had spades for many years and I think one of the two cables would come loose and drop off every couple of years.  It didn’t occur to me that I could use channel locks to tighten them so they wouldn’t fall off.  Finally I discovered that there are different sizes for spades!  At that point I examined mine and they were clearly too big for my binding posts.  That was clearly the reason they would fall off.  So I finally switched to locking bananas.  That brought up another problem.  For some reason I struggle to open them and I’ve actually come to dislike them.  I’ve read that regular bananas  can loosen but I have them on my electrostatic speakers and they’ve never seemed loose.  And I’ve had the same bananas for decades.  So I prefer regular bananas.

If you biwire with two separate identical cables, which is the recommendation,  and you only have one pair of speaker outputs on your amp, well then you have no choice but to use spades on one of the pairs (amp end). 

All Jeff Rowland amps use Cardas clamp for spades (or bare wires).  It does not accept bananas.  It creates extremely strong connection and rotating spade won't make it loose.   I have small Rowland 102 with speaker connector and it is great (other than not accepting bananas).

Well, I usually don’t use any connectors for speaker cables, just some teflon tubing to make a diy 47labs style plug.

Granted, that works for me mainly because I’m using small-ish gauge solid core wires.

For convenience, I sometimes use these hollow BFA bananas; they fit very tightly, are very low mass, have a larger surface area than spades connecting to the socket, and - my spades tend to come loose in my (limited) experience .

They also are very affordable, and I have yet to break one or fail in any way.

I’d love to some day figure out what thread speaker terminals most commonly use for the outer part that holds the spades/cables in place, to use a simple copper nut instead of the usual plastic clad brass things .

My speakers and the amp use a thread that almost is a metric M6, but a tad larger than 6mm; so it's probably an imperial thread size of unknown pitch.

Any hints for an ignorant European? 😉

I use one-piece BFA style banana plugs (not really banana plug but fit into the same female connection).  They fit tight, stay tight, and are one piece.  Tranditional banana plugs are a challenge because they have to be either gold coated steel (try a magnet on the cheaper ones) or they are solft and can loosen up.  They are also multiple pieces and I've had them pull apart on my.  

Spades, in addition to what has been said, can sometimes be pulled sideways into a short.  

BFA rules.

Jerry

@hilde45  Bananas are not actually meant for gorillas.  🤣

So what do you use instead??

Hey! I resemble that remark!

I have some cables with spades. I have some cables with bananas on them. When they break, I strip the wire and thread them through the hole.

My point is that it bananas can break. My AQ cable now lacks two of four bananas.

PS - I like crimp-on spades for barrier strips a lot.  The main difference there is the spades are soft, and screwed down. They're perfectly fine inside equipment.