Narns or bare stripped ends?

[admin_exported]

Hi,

I've always just had bare stripped ends on my speaker cable at amp end and speaker end. The trouble is, I always felt the need to trip and redo the ends every few months because of oxidisation. Which meant the cable quickly gotten to short and needed replacing. So I've put banana plugs on the ends now. In my mind, they can't conduct as well as bare fresh copper cable ends (because copper conducts better than gold, and the increased surface area of squished down 532 strand copper cable).

My dad used to solder on his banana plugs rather than tighten down the screw. Used to heat it up and flood the entire orifice with "silver solder". Do you think it's worth doing? Right now, I think I'm in the same boat with the clamped copper going into the narns where I'd be inclined to re-trim periodically.

What do you think?

Mike.

 

[Anonymous]

Probably best to use a compression fitting (tighten down the screw) and then add solder to stop any further oxidation or the compression fitting becoming loose. Personally I wouldnt worry about it too much, there are quite a few soldered joints along the way so another one or two won't make much difference.

 

[chebby]

Soldered nickel plated banana plugs every time (for me).

YMMV

 

[iceman16]

I use these every 6 months

 

[busb]

I bought 8 pairs of double screw fixing gold plated hollow pin 4mm from Sevenoaks for just under £4 each. My bi-wire runs of old Exposure cable were too thick to fit in most stackable connectors.

 

[oldric_naubhoff]

you can always use unplated pure copper plugs (bananas or spades). true, they're more expensive than brass but you can't say you have no choice.

as for oxidation, I'd wager you'd have to wait several years to see any ill effect of oxidation of copper. maybe even decades. it corrodes very slowly.

 

[MajorFubar]

I use banana plugs to make it easier to connect and reconnect the speakers after they're moved for hoovering, but from a sound-quality perspective, I've never understood how adding extra connections at each end of the cable is beneficial. Surely you may as well just clamp the cable inside the hole.