Ive invested heavily into Furutech, Should I be concerned about my furutech plugs not lasting!
Looking for pure copper or Cu/Au bananas
Hello friends,
Trying to order a new set of DIY speaker cables. I have most of the connectors but need to order two pairs to replace bad Furutech bananas.
The requirements:
- Solid copper or gold over copper. Absolutely NO brass core.
- Screw down wire connections. No soldering
- Either fully insulated or easy to insulate, so nothing with a metal housing.
- Less than $80
Suggestions?
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- 55 posts total
You could try Audioquest Suregrip 300 BFA series banana plugs. They are Beryllium copper with good set-screws (not brass, but not pure copper). Cheaper than Furutech. Whatever you do, DO NOT buy the Audioquest 500 or 1000 series bananas. They are absolute crap. Very loose fit and the set screws and case screws are so small that they are usually stripped already. |
I’ve tried locking, angled bananas from both Furutech and WBT, and there was no contest. The big issue for me was the diameter of the banana and deformation. The Furutech were the rhodium plated models. When I first got them they were used on Focals. In those the Furutech were too small to grip tightly and a couple of the 4 deformed permanently after me trying too hard to expand them. They NEVER gripped very tightly. The WBT Cu angled bananas on the other hand never deformed and gripped everything extremely well. Never had a problem with them after multiple insertion cycles. I will literally never ever ever use a Furutech connector again. Unfortunately I’m also too cheap to use the WBT Nexgen equivalent now either. :D |
Hey @brunomarcs - I'd say if they are working for you right now you should leave it all alone. I don't think they'll crumble to dust in our lifetimes. |
I have not seen any "locking" banana plugs that worked at all. The problem is exactly like you said -- the plugs just do not grip tightly at all. The same exact problem exists on any other "locking" connector. I don't like locking connectors of any type, banana, RCA, etc. If you go to this following link, scroll down and look at the picture of the bare banana plug: This model is not a "locking" type banana. The plug itself is formed using a slightly larger diameter than the standard banana socket. The stiffness of the metal acts as a "spring" to hold the plug in the binding posts. I have used these many times and the connection is extremely tight! The gold-plated models are $19 each and the rhodium-plated are $22 (not that much of a difference). Once you clamped down the set-screws, you can either use the existing screw-on shell or just heatshrink the ends.
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- 55 posts total