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Bananas vs. Spades

I bought some older Audioquest cables (Crystal) for shotgun biwire from McCormack DNA 0.5 dlx to Vandersteen 2cis. These cables are big and heavy. I am sending them to AQ to be terminated and I have two options for the speaker end (Vandys have factor bananas at about 30" off floor). Could use bananas as intended with supports to prevent weight of wire from damaging speaker termination or (worse) the banana jacks on the speakers. AQ technician recommends using spades and then a spade to banana adaptor that fits up close to the speaker and allows the wire's weight to pull straight down, with weight much closer to the fulcrum (so to speak). What do you all think? I fear a loss of sound quality by using two connections, but there is also an advantage in having spades on both ends for re-use or re-sale. Any advice appreciated. Thanks.
128x128swampwalker
garfish
1,840 posts
 
P.S. If your banana plugs don't fit tight, use a small screw driver to pry out the plug sections so it is a little bigger in diameter-- I had to do this on a couple of plugs. Good Luck. Craig.
lak's avatar
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lak
4,627 posts
 
Swampwalker, at times I have used a duo 24K goidbananna styled speaker connector (where the speaker wire hangs streight down the back of the bananna, speaker wire is held in place by small hand screws). They can be purchased from your local audio dealer or from Audio Advisor for about $15 for a set. I hope this helps.
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swampwalker OP
5,138 posts
 
Lak- I have some of the gold-plated dual bananas (Esoteric Audio I believe), but my concern is how to securely attach bare wire to the screw down. The AQ cables have numerous seperately insulated wires, each stranded. Difficult to keep those all together and the hand screw is pointed, so it would tend to penetrate a twisted together group of thin strands and many would not make contact.
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swampwalker OP
5,138 posts
 
Actually, AQ cable (Crystal) is 12 strands of solid OFC-LG copper around a foamed dielectric. Same problem, though, how to get handscrew to contact 12 strands of (approx) 20 ga. wire. I'm thinking of using AXON spades and bananas (gold plated copper). Very inexpensive and look pretty nice on their web site. Unless anyone has better idea, I will probably make up a double biwire set by just setting them up as 4 runs of spade to banana, and then attaching two spades to each binding post on my McCormack DNA 0.5
trelja
3,223 posts
 
I think the Axon spades are as good as almost anything you can get(if you are going to use spades). For some reason, almost all of the connectors in this hobby are gold plated brass. To find one which is gold plated copper(and this cheap) is a rare gem. That being said, I use bare wire. But, when I do use connectors, I like bananas(but I don't get anal over what connector the wire has).
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