Securing spade connectors


I’ve just picked up a pair of my favorite speaker cables, Transparent Super, on the used market for a great price. Unlike my old pair, these have spade connectors. 

So it took me maybe 30 minutes to get these cables connected, the actual speaker cables and the network boxes etc are so heavy that it’s extremely difficult to prevent the spade from slipping out of the post. So I’d screw down a speaker side and then the amp end would slide out. 

And thanks to the design of the Transparent cables, the 2 ends are harder to work with because the positive and negative ends are just about 5” long where they split from the main cable, so they are extremely difficult to position and work with. And my speakers have spade jumpers so I’m double stacking the spades on the speaker side which makes it twice as hard to screw down.

I know I can probably send these back to Transparent to get re-terminated but there must be a way to make the spade connectors work… is there a better way to connect these big bastards - do people actually use wrenches to torque down the binding connector posts or is there some kind of trick to make it easier? 

jsqt

Showing 2 responses by jsqt

I just tried the cables on my Technics SU-R1000 last night and man what a night and day difference versus the Vampire binding posts on my Adcom. 

The Adcom had the short Vampire brass binding posts that I was finally able to use a wrench to tighten down…

But the Technics has big grippy plastic knobs that twist up, revealing a slot on the side of the binding post apparatus. The ends of the spades fit perfectly into that slot and then you just twist the post back down with the grippy knob when you’re done. 

I am curious though, what is the point of spade connectors on high end cables? The only real purpose I could see for them would be the vintage screw type speaker connectors where it’s literally a screw.