Bananas rule, spades drool. End of discussion.

Well, I usually don’t use any connectors for speaker cables, just some teflon tubing to make a diy 47labs style plug.

Granted, that works for me mainly because I’m using small-ish gauge solid core wires.

For convenience, I sometimes use these hollow BFA bananas; they fit very tightly, are very low mass, have a larger surface area than spades connecting to the socket, and - my spades tend to come loose in my (limited) experience .

They also are very affordable, and I have yet to break one or fail in any way.

I’d love to some day figure out what thread speaker terminals most commonly use for the outer part that holds the spades/cables in place, to use a simple copper nut instead of the usual plastic clad brass things .

My speakers and the amp use a thread that almost is a metric M6, but a tad larger than 6mm; so it's probably an imperial thread size of unknown pitch.

Any hints for an ignorant European? 😉

Recently I finally discovered the reason I was having problems.  It was because there are different sizes of spades and I didn’t have the right size for my binding posts.

Well, no offence, but not using the correct size of spades (for decades?), or not being able to use pliers to loosen an overtightened nut, that doesn't disqualify spades - it's a different kind of issue.

As for regular banana plugs, what are we talking about?
If it's the multiple spring type, those are more for convenience than performance, as they get loose over time, and are not a tight fit to begin with.

As said above, personally I don't use plugs at all when possible, and basic hollow BFA plugs when I have to.

For convenience and performance, maybe some of those locking plugs are decent, if they don't require soldering, but they still are a big lump of metal and pricey if you want to get the good ones.

@carlsbad2

I actually just ordered a few gold plated copper wire ends - if that’s the proper English term - to experiment with that.

Great minds think alike, and all that. 😉

Thank you for the advice!