@4krowme
I have noticed that manufacturers do not mention what the connectors are actually made of. All they love saying is that they’re "Gold plated" and wrongfully tout that it’s better conductivity, when that’s not what the Gold is for. It’s supposed to act as an anti-corrosive agent over the underlying metal being used. Nickel is just worse and cheaper than Gold as a conductor and as a plating agent.
Circuit boards are a whole other animal. I remember when I was selling speakers, the DCM rep showed their Time-Delayed cross over in this beautiful clean circuit board with gold plated caps, and neatly wound coils. Then one day I opened my Timeframe 600s to replace a blown tweeter...and dear GAWD...the mess. It’s as if the person who put that cross over together had the runs and couldn’t hold it in while soldering and went ape-poop with the plastic glue gun. Then just slapped it to particle board and covered it in fiber glass fluff. :(
Deceptive Connectors
Way back in the mid 1990s, I had bought some expensive "gold plated" "high-definition" banana plugs from a company called Audiosource. They had heft and weight, and used a good cold weld, by screwing into the copper. During those times, the sound quality was much improved over soldering the copper and feeding it through the hole in the banana plug post.
I had long since retired these connectors until I was working on my Earth Ground boxes and needed some banana plug connections. For one of the boxes, I needed a plug that could handle stiff, OFC 10awg copper wire. The Audiosource connectors couldn't handle anything more than 12awg. So I bought some cheap Media Bridge banaplugs off Amazon because they could supposedly handle 8awg wire (Note: They don't) . They weren't all that expensive, so I didn't really think too much of them....until....
I was working on a ground wire using the old Audiosource plugs when I accidentally snapped off one of the folds of the actual banana plug and was horrified. It was plastic. They "gold-plated" plastic. I suppose that is one way to eliminate "skin-effect." So my eyes immediately turned to the Media Bridge plugs. I ruined an old pair of wire cutters trying to cut into those plugs. I was *NOT* successful in breaking those plugs, at all; not even a little bit. So I pulled out a box cutter and started scrapping away....and it was coming up all copper. So the cheaper Media Bridge plugs are solid copper and gold plated. Nice.
Moral of the story, cost does not always equal quality. :(