Recommendations for banana plugs

Cardas bananas.

Spades are better...better connection. Nordost/ cardas bananas fine and dandy. Don' think you can go wrong here.

i also think spades do a better job, but cardas banannas are where its at

Reterminate with spades then use the Monster expanding banana plugs (Xterminators) which lock on to spades. Spades are waaaay preferable, and using this method you can have both spades and bananas.

The Nordost Z-Plug is your best choise. Go to the Nordost
website and read why they preffer it over spades. They claim that it has more contact area than a spade connector.

The Nordost Z-plug is a very fine connector. I like it better than spades because it does not require tightening of the binding nut and it offers a very large contact area.

For all, do not confuse the Nordost Z-plug with and ordinary banana. An ordinary banana has limited surface contact area. The Z-plug has contact over the complete other surface as it is made of "spring" metal and expands in all directions to make complete contact with the inner surface of the binding post.

Unlike spades, it does not require periodic tightening of the binding post.

Enjoy,

TIC

Sounds like Nordost is the way to go. However, spring metal or not, spades give better contact. Bananas are more convenient.

What about WBT?

WBT? Good question. My RCA's are WBT's. Great RCA's. How good are the bananas?

WBT makes several grades of each, spades, bananas and RCAs. The best are very good indeed and I would recommend them. I'm not saying the other brands mentioned aren't any good. What I am saying is that the WBTs are right up there and I don't think you would go wrong with them.

The LAT International locking banana plugs are great as well! I have them on all ends of my speaker cables. They never come loose.

i've used the Eichmans on a pair of speaker cables i demoed. baring in mind this was a well used pair of demo cables, the eichmans were great. i really like the low mass philosophy employed in all there connectors and already use their silver bullets on my interconnects. admittedly they were on a completely different cable, and i'm sure that the cable played most of the part in this, but the sound was much better with this cable than my stock ones. so if the plugs were a degrading factor, it clearly didn't demonstrate that.
i will say that they can be bent and can get pretty beat up looking when used heavily, but then how often do you really plug and unplug cables? if you just attach them and then don't screw about with them much, they are imo great. wbt and the rest, seem like expensive audio jewellery in comparison, the hi fi equivalent of a heavy gold chain and medallion....