Spades V.s Bananas - what's the story?

[Peteruk]

Hey all,

While I've been looking at various DIY speaker cable guides (especially cat5e), it came to my attention I never gave the type of speaker connection much consideration.

Personally, I've always used banana plugs (I confess, I currently use rather chaep ones); in fact, I've never looked at spades at all. It always seemed to me that mechanically bananas made a better theoretical connection and were less exposed, even if they are usually more pricey. That said, I'm still not entirely sure how spades connect.

So really - to the point of this thread: Which do you prefer? Advantages and disadvantages of either? What do you prefer? Raw cable even?

All thoughts appreciated.

Peter

P.S. Not sure if this is exactly the right subforum...appologies if not.

[Sonusthree]

Hi,
I like the solid connection and durability of spades but I use bananas as a compromise to avoid accidentally shorting my amplifier.
I would use bare (regularly re-stripped) wire if I didn't need to remove and replace the connections so often.

Cheers,
Martin.

[BWRX]

Mechanically and electrically speaking, spades can give you better contact if the binding post is of good quality. Banana plugs are very convenient if you swap connections a lot. They also wear out if you swap them out a lot.

[FastEddy]

http://aussieamplifiers.com/nx150s.htm ... these new amp modules use spades for I/O, power, etc ... but not in the low level signal path. Semi perminant and rugged enough, pertty good quality = no compalints.

I have a bunch of bananas jacks that have thumb screws that spread the banana "skins", causing the banana to swell up inside the binding post = works out great, very solid contact ... from some place in Florida...

[neutron7]

Don't forget about Neutrik designed Speakons!
very positive connection, flush mount on back of amp (although the connectors themselves are rather huge) and you need to drill a 15/16 hole or so

you can have 4 or 8 separate wires per connection depending on which speakons you use. that means you can build an amp/speakers ready to Bi/Tri amp without having to drill more holes.

I was skeptical at first but so far so good for me.

[Steve Eddy]

Personally I prefer small, simple spades and small, simple screw terminals (#6 spades and #6 screw terminals).

se