Bananas rule, spades drool. End of discussion.

OP:

IMHO, rhodium should never be considered.  It's just too hard to grip well and doesn't conduct very well.  Gold had the least oxidation, but I love me the silver plated one's. :)

Pure copper is a great choice, but will require regular maintenance.

By the way, hope you all know I'm not unhappy if you like spades and have never had a negative experience with them.  😁

It is true that some can’t avoid spades. My suggestions in those cases are:

• Consider WBT with the spring loaded spades
• Avoid rhodium at all costs (it’s too hard and poor conductor)
• Stick to soft spades, pure copper cores with gold plating for instance
• Avoid brass, again, too hard.
• If your binding post is not captive (most are) use a lock nut

The softer the spade, the more it will squeeze under compression and provide for a tighter fit. The harder the material on the spade and binding post the less likely you are to have a long term reliable connection.

Well, not sure if the Viborg bananas I linked are "regular bananas" but they are just as tight today as they were when first used. They also take up less space than the locking kinds.

As mentioned, love WBT for locking types, and boo on Furutech, but maybe I got a fake set?  Send me a complete set of 12 pairs of bananas so I can fully evaluate them again... :D

Cardas not only makes absolutely excellent connectors, they are super nice people to deal with.  I absolutely support their work.  Still, you shouldn't need a super fancy Cardas spade connector to get reliable. 

I mean, sure, there are amps with Cardas or Mundorf or some other high end socket for spades, and they're great at their cost.  For the rest of us though, da banana is da bomb-a.

Having to use channel locks kind of proves my point.  I mean, sure use them if you want to, but knowing you must use them because the spades will otherwise come loose is exactly the problem I'm happy to avoid by using excellent bananas.

PS - I like crimp-on spades for barrier strips a lot.  The main difference there is the spades are soft, and screwed down. They're perfectly fine inside equipment.

@lanx0003  Exactly my point.

Of course, I don't' really care what A'goners actually DO in their system.  Just wanted to express my experience and why this is a banana friendly household.

@drmuso You’ve had better luck than I have then. I don’t clean connectors after insertion though I’m too busy for that. :)

I have however gone through several pairs of speakers and moved frequently,  and I used to do more experiments with speaker cables until I settled on Mogami.

@czarivey  And that IMHO has the highest likelihood of causing shorts, so got to be careful. :)

@hilde45  Bananas are not actually meant for gorillas.  🤣

So what do you use instead??

@glennewdick I’ve had both WBT and Furutech locking bananas. I’m not sure if the Furutech’s I got were fake or not but the WBT’s were absolutely better.

The Furutechs were made of thick pot metal, deformed when expanded, and the diameter of the banana was rather on the small side.

Another A’goner recommended these, and I use them exclusively. The spring and barrel construction is pretty thoughtful. The barrel ensures a long wide contact with the socket, and the spring keeps it plenty tight. I have 8 of these with heavy cables pointing straight up and they are just as tight now as they were 2 years ago.  For safety you really must use the heat shrink sleeves which are included.

@hilde45 - I’ve never encountered one in the wild.  I have no way of statistically examining a sample of every connection ever made to a speaker.  All I can do is talk directly about my experience and I've never had a banana come loose just because. 

I can't say that about spades, at all.

I have seen the cords pull out of a banana plug at a dealer, but that was nothing to do with the banana to speaker side, and I'd expect it had more to do with the wear and tear dealers put on their cables while switching demo speakers.

Let me go a little Youtube snake oil on you all:

With banana plugs the electricity doesn't bend!! The electrons coming off the wire keep going straight, ,but with spades it has to do a 90 degree turn!! Of course this affect sound staging because of all the phase noise. 

🤣

Oh, and PS, the contact area of a split banana is quite large.

BTW, I'm sure you can get good spades to stay tight... but if you ask me over all the time I've been working with speakers, plugging and unplugging them and troubleshooting them, bananas have been head and shoulders more reliable.

@akgwhiz  I remember asking for a no solder banana recommendation, and I might have even asked for a spade.  Eventually I went with some affordable silver plated bananas recommended to me by another A'goner and they were perfect for the 12 and 10 gauge cables I needed to make.

@tomic601  Brings up a good point, and that is that a lot of spades and the speaker connectors are not given a lot of thought. 

Focal for instance used nickel plated binding posts, which is a very hard material.  Using it with hard spades results in a situation where they will never grip for long. This is why we assemble machine screws with split ring washers, so the spring keeps the screw tight.  No give, no reliability.

WBT makes what I think are the most reliable spade connectors, which use a type of spring to ensure the spade and post stay tight. 

Yes, it's true we want maximum contact area, but have you ever taken apart a female IEC (power) connector, or wall outlet?  The actual contact area at the plug is very small, comparable to the contact area of a good banana.

Lastly, solder is never used in high current installations like power transmission for a reason.  It's brittle and doesn't conduct all that well.  Cold well and tight crimps are the way to go.

@ghdprentice - TBH, I don’t care _that_ much about the subject, but a tight banana beats a loose spade every day of the week. 😁

The reason I thought to post this was I just realized how my connection problems went away when I switched to bananas.  I haven't had cabling problems for a couple of years exactly because I don't use spades.

@garebear  Sir this is Audiogon..  You get what you pay for and a whole lot less.