Bananas rule, spades drool. End of discussion.

I checked my spades (2 spades on the amp end in combination with 2 bananas and 4 spades on the speaker end) tonight, and they were tight.  It's been at least two or three years since I messed with them at either (amp or speaker) end.

Now I guess I am going to have to go back and check my spades.

(I am bi-wired, so at the amp end I actually do have a pair of bananas and a pair of spades.)

But I cannot ever recollect any of my spades coming loose.  I tighten them as tight as I can get them by hand and then give them a tiny tweak with a pair of pliers.  I wish they had a hex head, but I guess the reason that they don't is because people would be going ballistic and over-torquing and stripping?

Vice-grips on your binding posts?  Really?  Must do wonders for resale.  AudioQuest makes a great hand wrench that fits both terminal sizes.

@coppy777  , I just did a quick google on those and found a picture on AA.  Unfortunately, my B&W binding posts do not have hex heads, they are round heads with I guess what would be referred to as knurls on them.  I am a retired mechanic, so I have an excess of sockets and wrenches, and if they did have hex heads that would make my life a lot easier; as it is I use a pair of small channel locks to give them a tweak with after I hand tighten them.  I assume that B&W did not use hex heads because they felt that folks would be smoking them down and stripping them out.

@coppy777  , here is a picture of kind of what mine look like.  I did the search for that AQ wrench you mentioned because I was thinking that maybe it was machined to match those (what I am referring to as) knurls that B&W used on my binding posts.  I guess I could replace them with better posts (like maybe Cardas?) but one of my fatal flaws is probably laziness, and once I have the spades attached and satisfactorily torqued, it's kind of like "out of site/out of mind."  As I typed earlier, however, on the rare occsions that I do have to mess with them, I always wish that they did have hex heads.  I guess I could by a set of eight (I am biwired) Cardas(?) posts with hex-heads, and next time I have to remove the speaker wire spades I guess I could then change them . . . I guess I could do that. . . .

They're heavy brass, not good.

That link was onlty to illustrate what my binding posts look like.  I don't know what B&W actually used.

I have been told many times by folks more knowledgeable than I that the best sound is from finger tight connection and using more will degrade the sound.

I cannot comprehend why that would be, but there is a long long list of stuff in that category.  And maybe that would explain why B&W did not use hex heads for their binding posts. 

but from my in depth studies on a dozen other things that shouldn’t matter, but do… little stuff that other folks with more experience than I recommend that don’t cost much, I’ll just do. Not worth the hours of fiddling to figure it out.

I agree--no argument here.