Steve Guttenberg finally reviews the Eminent Technology LFT-8b loudspeaker.

One participant on the Planar Speaker Asylum Forum wrote that he spoke with Bruce Thigpen about upgrading the speakers' crossover parts, and that Bruce was not at all offended, actually encouraging him to do so and providing some technical advice.

If you'll notice, in the pics @harpo75 posted above you can see that he has replaced the stock binding posts with the best ones Cardas makes: the CPBP model. If you look at the expanded pics of that post on the Cardas website, you will be able to see what makes them so. That post is as close as you can get to the Electra Cable Tube Connector by GR Research without forfeiting your ability to use speaker cables with spade connectors. 

Actually, the tube connectors are not that great. You still have two solder connections and a connector.....it may have a shorter connection than most connectors but not as pure as a WBT Nextgen with low mass pure copper connections. My plastic clamp system is the purest sounding of all...and you can clamp wires together without any connectors.....less is more, most of the time.

The main problem with the tube connector is just what you stated: you have to use a banana into it and you cannot jumper to another connector or add more goodies like Music Purifiers. What if you have an expensive speaker cable with spades on it?.......then you cannot use your cables without a terrible signal distorting adapter. Using cables with no connectors and clamping together sounds like a hard solder....the purest sound. Here are three pics (bottom of page) of my plastic connectors (which cannot take bananas):

http://tweakaudio.com/EVS-2/Digital_amp_mods.html

You can also see my plastic clamp system on the xover for the Apogee speakers in the last link......two posts above.  He loves them.  He uses the Fidelium bi-wire adapter and has Music Purifiers and Ground Enhancers on each set pf posts for best sound.......so, is clamping the Fidelium cables directly to the wire going into the xover.  His speakers sound amazing!

I thought you might have something to say on this subject Ric. ;-)

I'm unaware of the WBT Nextgen post, though I do have some of the RCA's on ic cables. Gotta check those out.

Yes ricevs, hardwiring even is always the best way to go.  Although it can also be inconvenient for moving, cleaning, upgrading, selling equipment.  I’ve thought of doing it many times to the speakers but haven’t.  Not real hard to do there.  I have hard wired from a couple sources in the past.  That at least gets rid of the connections on one end. 

The Apogee’s have to be fantastic. 

One application where I am pretty serious about hardwiring is in the tonearm. All my arms have single uninterrupted length of wires, from cartridge clips to RCA jacks. With a signal that low in level you really don’t want any extra joints (so to speak ;-) .