speaker banana plugs


Hello, I own vintage gear. Marantz, Klipsch, Technics and a modern Rotel cd player. I find that with my budget these days the stuff they sell at BestBuy is horrible. Anyway my question is this. I run some fairly decent Monster speaker cable,''remember the part about my budget'' with gold banana plugs into the back of my Klipsch speakers. It seems to me that if I were to scrap the banana plugs and trim off a 1/4 inch of insulation on the cables and insert the exposed end through the binding post holes then gently tighten down the red and black screws it would serve as a more direct connection. Am I wrong? I'm going to try it. Aren't you losing signal with banana plugs ? opinions please.
honeyfan
I think the old adage "shortest distance between two points is a straight line" applies. Bare ends makes a more direct connection.
When customers use to ask me about what kind of termination to use I would tell them "nothing is better than nothing".
I totally agree. I am a believer in bare wire anytime it is possibe. I understand there are some complicated wire designs that need to be terminated, but we really should be using simple designs.
Bare wire will work better then any termination method. Also, to improve the sound try to 'tin' the ends with silver solder.
Really? Silver solder? My instincts tell me that this would not improve sound but possibly affect it in a negative way. Maybe if the solder was 100% pure but isn't silver solder only something like 5% silver?
No, you're not losing any signal with banana plugs. Not even a little bit. That said, all connectors are only for convenience or security. Bare wire works fine.
You tin the ends to keep from oxidation and corrosion, oxidized copper doesn't conduct so well. If you use bare wire which is best you need to clean or re-strip so connections not oxidized on a fairly regular basis unless tinned or you use connectors like banana.
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