Bananas / Spades

[Vladimir]

But solder oxidises!

Which is why you refresh the terminations periodically.

I used Vascelene on banana plugs and have never worried since.

I understand that Tara cable owners may need vaseline, butttt... *biggrin* If you use Vaseline or any other non-conductive coating, your point of connection in a banana plug is reduced to that little tightening screw or even worse, a spring. The resistance of that termination is probably quite high because the vaseline acts like a dielectric reducing the effective metal to metal touching conducting surfaces. You wanted to do good but you created the worst conductivity bottleneck possible.

Did the bass loosen up a bit with the new vaseline plug treatment?

 

[Vladimir]

Agreed Vlad. There must be a similar conductive 'grease'?

Yes actually. It's called Quicksilver.

Soldering spades on your cables and heatshrinking them well, is the most durable termination with excellent conductivity. As previosly suggested by andyjm.

 

[TrevC]

Just as an addition to my earlier post, anyone who is using spades or bananas that aren't soldered to the cable but use those silly little grubscrews should be ashamed of themselves.

Why?

 

[Electro]

This is a conductive grease that should seal bare speaker cable ends .

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B008RKXIFY/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_1?pf_rd_p=569136327&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B008RKXPBQ&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=0VVJSBS3TR4TPD8W75JJ

I use the Nordost style lightweight spring type banana plugs .

I soldered them to my Van Damme 4mm cable using silver solder and then used shrink tube to seal the joint , and it works very well with zero maintainence .

 

[Ivek]

Has someone done the test in order to discover which is better?