Soldering banana plugs onto speaker

[admin_exported]

Can anyone give me an idea of the size of soldering iron necessary to make a good job of soldering banana plugs onto speaker cable. The biggest iron that I have is 25 watts and I suspect that this will not be powerful enough to do the job.

Cheers

Steve

 

[Anonymous]

Is there a specific reason why you wish to use plugs that will require soldering?

I was going to have cable soldered onto banana plugs, but rather opted for those banana plugs that use 2 grub screws where no soldering is required ... (puresonic)

I read somewhere that these are the better ones to go for instead of soldering ... (not sure if this is the case, or if the facts are correct?)

I do have speaker cables with plugs that have been soldered (Silver High Breed), but bought them ready made/soldered

 

[Anonymous]

Hi, dim-span,

My main reason for soldering was that I couldn't seem to find the type with the two grubscrews anywhere on line. Are you able to send me a link??

 

[Anonymous]

search ebay for puresonic ... but look at the 24K gold ones ... I bought mine from a hifi dealer and paid £12.50 ... they sell on ebay for less than £5 for a set of 4

there are prob better ones available, but those were the best in the hifi shop and I was hasty

I needed plugs that have the spring type connection (that grip tight), as the previous 4mm banana plugs that I bought were a bit loose fitting on my speaker terminals

I have read that if you solder, you create another possible 'weak link' for the connection?

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks very much, I'll check it out.

 

[a91gti]

If you are going to solder bananas to your cable (ooh-er missus!) you are best off with some fairly lightweight bananas (ooh-er missus!). For these your 25watt iron is fine, get the plug good and hot then off you go.
I'm not sure as to the benefits or lack of, I had to do mine as I have sixteen solid cores per channel to manage.

 

[Anonymous]

why introduce a possibly inferior metal (solder) to your cables?

A high end audio shop that I buy from advises its customers to keep to bare wire

 

[a91gti]

@ the o.p, make sure you use solder with a high silver content.
@ the ***, they can advise what they like, different people think differently that's one of the joys of "hifi".
As I said in my previous post, my cable (cat6 stuff) is tricky stuff to manage when naked.

 

[Anonymous]

25 watt is insufficient for a good soldered joint on to a banana plug, I would recommend at least a 100 watt iron.

Also a soldered joint will give a much better electrical contact than the screw type banana plug thats why professionals use this type of joint, your dealer who recommended the screw type is off his rocker.

When putting together my present set up I used a very fine jewellers blowtorch which produced an excellent job, but I would not recommend this method for the inexperienced.........

 

[a91gti]

Fair point, just looked at the iron I used for mine and it`s a 60 watt jobbie, it does depend on the banana in question though as some use a lot more metal than others.