How to connect speaker cable to speakers? (1 Viewer)

[Haris Ellahi]

I see that some (if not most) people use some sort of speaker cable connecter (spade, banana, etc.) to connect the cable to their speakers. My question is that is there anything wrong in connecting the bare wire to the speaker?

 

[Tim Morton]

Bare wire is fine....if you could "tin" the wire with some nice solder first that would be preferred. But if not you may just want to keep an eye on corrosion for the air on the copper or silver.

 

[Walt Park]

I thought tinning was just to keep it from fraying. Basically tinning is coating the tip in solder. There are some pic's here: http://www.geocities.com/jonrisch/spkrcbl1.htm

 

[Bob McElfresh]

The audiophile view is that bare-wire is the best. Not for any acoustic reason, but the fewer breaks mean less likelyhood of loose connections.

But I dont know about your fingers, but the binding posts on my receiver are fairly tightly packed. And the holes barely big enough for the 12 ga wire we usually use. It's very dangerous to leave copper strands sticking out to cause a short.

For all these reasons, banana plugs make hooking up your system a lot easier and safer.

I like the dual-banana plugs from Radio Shack for behind my speakers (xxx-308). The solid spacer bar prevents shorts should the wires get pulled out with the power on.

But the dual plugs stick out a bit far for some racks so the single-bananas (xxx-306) work great for behind the receiver.

 

[RobertCharlotte]

I've recently rewired my whole setup. At the speakers, I now have pin connectors (part #278-320) at all locations, since all my speakers have those little spring-clip push connectors. Behind the receiver, I now have banana plugs (part #278-306) for left, center, and right, and bare wire for the surrounds (alas, my Kenwood VR-507 choked when I tried to put pin connectors into those little locking-type push connectors). All my connectors are from Radio Shack, and my only complaint is that they don't seem to offer a banana plug in the 14-16 gauge range, which is what I'm using. You can get the smaller size for the pins, but on the banana plugs I had to use the 10-12 gauge size and a little prayer.

I'm still trying to decide if I want to tin those bare-wire connections. Stuffing that 14-gauge cable into those tiny little holes is annoying work.