When connecting speaker cables to banana plugs, is Soldering recommended ( cables to banana) ?
Thanks
Usually the manufacturer specifies the preferred method of securing the cable to connector. What brand of banana plug are you considering?
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I would recommend solder over crimp, some offer sonic welding like Blue Jeans and now Iconoclast and reported to be superior
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Thanks
AudioQuest
Audioquest makes several model bananas but I assume all are intended to use the manufacturer’s set screw installation.( I couldn’t find one photograph of AQ bananas in any state of disassembly that would allow for easy soldering.) I recently made a set of Furutech speaker cables with FS Alpha 36 wire and FT-211 connectors. The wire is fine stranded and the connectors are intended to be used as set screw installation. I asked Chris VenHaus (the owner of VenHaus Audio) what was the preferred method of installation and I followed his primary recommendation for set screw speaker wire connector installation: WBT crimp sleeve crimped over the wire and then using the set screws to secure. This worked like a charm, much better than just crushing the wires under the set screw because the crimp sleeve compresses the wire so tightly oxidation is kept at bay and you don’t have the compromised conductivity of solder. All this assumes you are using multi stranded speaker wire. The only issue with this is that you have to have access to a set of $140 WBT special pliers to crimp the sleeves. Chris VH will rent them to you for a few bucks when you buy your connectors from him, which is what I did.
If you don’t want to go to that amount of trouble, this is what I have done to make a neat solder job that allows that fits well into a set screw cylinder. I took a couple fine strands of the speaker wire, tied and twisted one of them around the diameter of the wire at the top of the wiring that would be inserted into the connector and then another wire around the bottom of the area inserted into the connector. That way the wiring is tightly cinched together into a cylinder that requires a minimum of solder. Then I trim the wire flush above the wire wrapped, then apply flux and solder to the trimmed end. I found WBT 0800 solder to work really well.
Like almost everything in the realm of audiophilia, people argue endlessly about issues that probably can’t be proven one way or another and I suspect the issue of solder vs. set screw is one of those.
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