2. cables
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Your thoughts please

I have a 10 year old Acurus a250 amp...great amp...with plastic screw-down caps on the speaker connection posts. An audio salesman told me not to get spades because the connection would not be good.....is this true? The banana "hole" in the plastic cap doesn't accept the full length of my bananas so I had to get a step down plug....is this not a desireable way to connect cables to the amp? Should I just go with bare wire? Am I making too much of this? Thanks.
rbfletch
marakanetz's avatar
marakanetz
5,473 posts
 
I had plastic screw-downs on my Sunfire SRA, but figured that base under them is metal and they're simply for color purposes. I removed them leaving only the metal caps which I colored with permanent marker and if I ever need to tighten stronger than hand-tight, I can use pliers or small vise-grip.
musicallyinclined
62 posts
 
Sometimes, the simplest solutions are the best ones!
How is the resulting sound? Do you actually hear a difference?
stevecham
3,340 posts
 
After years of believing that (and implementing) spades and bananas were needed, I have gone back to bare wire with a little ProGold on the ends and feel this is the best method sonically.
nonoise's avatar
nonoise
10,805 posts
 
Bare wire, if you can get away with it as proscribed above. You can also try tinning the lead ends with some solder, lightly applied, to resist oxidation and corrosion.

All the best,
Nonoise
mtrot
804 posts
 
I had some Anti-cables with spades. I got to looking at the spades and they didn't look so good, so I took them off and connected the bare wire ends. I thought the sound improved noticeably with the bare ends.

Also, FWIW, Morrow recommends their speaker wires with "nude" connections, if possible.
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