4mm cable and my Marantz 7001

[stevee1966]

Thought i'd do a test to see if a thicker cable will give me a beter sound so i bought a 2 metre length the other day to play against my bog standard entry level QED.

Just planned on doing the comparison but the speaker connectors on the back of my marantz amp do not undo enough to leave enough space to squeeze the 4mm cable in.

What a waste of time and money, and what an obvious design flaw.

Suppose banana plugs would do the trick but the idea was to spend a small amount to do the comparison before deciding whether to then go out and buy full lengths for both my speakers.

DOH !!!!

 

[russ74]

I know how you feel, I changed to a 4.2mm speaker cable and on my Nad amp though the binding posts screw far enough back the hole is too small. Had to do a fair bit of twisting to just about get most of the strands in though it was via a few expletives and bloody fingers!.I would use banana plugs, spades etc but the cable gets used every now and again on a 70's Panasonic amp which has the old insert and twist - lock sockets.Not sure what you would do if you wanted to use 6mm bare wireIt definitely is an issue with some modern amps and could be easily rectified quite cheaply I would have thought.I second that DOH !!

 

[stevee1966]

russ74:I would use banana plugs, spades etc but the cable gets used every now and again on a 70's Panasonic amp which has the old insert and twist - lock sockets.

How easy is it to connect banana plugs or spades ? Do these require some form of soldering etc ? If so then i'll not bother and stick to what i've got.

 

[Anonymous]

4mm cable - why?? Its not going to make a difference to our sound just cost you a lot of pennys.

 

[Andrew Everard]

stevee1966:

How easy is it to connect banana plugs or spades ? Do these require some form of soldering etc ? If so then i'll not bother and stick to what i've got.

These just clamp on.

 

[Anonymous]

You could get the speaker terminal outputs changed, I had to do much the same some while back with my old Luxman L4, the terminals were so small I even had problems connecting odyssey 2's unterminated....................

 

[russ74]

All the banana plugs I use have a small screw got grip the wire. Most of the spades I've seen are either crimp/solder or screw on. Haven't yet needed to fit spades as those vintage early 70's Sony amps keep eluding me on ebay!One thing I have found with the various banana plugs used is that some are a tight fit and some are really loose despite the basic specifications being the same.I disagree that using 4mm cable won't make any difference, the Ixos speaker cable I now use which is basically a 300+ multi stranded copper cable sounds a lot better than the 2.5mm 79 strand copper wire that came free with my speakers and the QED Silver Anniversary cable it replaced. Though my old Leak receiver sounds much better with the 2.5mm supra classic cable I set up for it (2 pin din plugs required) than all of the above. As we all know choosing cables is a very subjective field.

 

[Anonymous]

yorkydave:
4mm cable - why?? Its not going to make a difference to our sound just cost you a lot of pennys.

Agreed. Over a couple of meters it won't make any difference.
I'll admit to being a telco engineer and sceptic.
Seeing as how you've bought it a couple of crimp on spades should be fine.
Despite my stated position - I hope you enjoy it