Can I connect speaker wire this way...?

Dekay, it makes sense to me that it would actually work best w/o a "connector" i.e. spade or bananna, but I just wanted to make sure there wasn't something I was missing. In years past, equipment didn't require these connectors, you just pushed down the lever and inserted the wire. I have tried using bananna's with spades in the past, to make connecting the equipment easier to connect, it clearly degraded the sound.

Does anyone know of a good contact cleaner maintenance product for bare wire connections?

Brian, you don't need connectors. You can use bare wire with no problems. I don't use any connectors on my amp end, OR my speaker end(with my current cables). There are two issues here. If the connectors are better conductors than the wire itself(silver connectors w/copper wire) you would get a better "ohmic" contact(electrical speak for lower contact resistance). However, most of us use a connector of higher resistivity(gold plated - usually brass). The contact resistance is higher in these circumstances. The other thing is that even if the resistivity IS lower, many feel that there is a degradation in sound wherever one material transitions to another. So a gold plated brass connector would lose on both counts.

The best contact cleaners I have run into are the DeoxIT and PreservIT, formally called Cramolin Red and Blue, products from Caig Laboratories (www.caig.com). I use their R5 DeoxIT spray. It works great for contacts, pots and switches.

Thanks for the website Mstorkamp. Cramolin is the one that I remembered/forgot.