Banana Plugs - all are created equal right?

stoofa

stoofa

stoofa

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Need to get some banana plugs (well don't need - want to get) as I'm replacing my receiver and it will just be a neater and easier way of doing things.
Having a look online and prices vary....a lot.
Found a pack of 20 from the Rainforest, listed as 4mm gold plated for £5.
I can also find some at triple, quadruple that price.

I don't need to get anything special here do I?

Ta
 
stoofa said:
Need to get some banana plugs (well don't need - want to get) as I'm replacing my receiver and it will just be a neater and easier way of doing things.
Having a look online and prices vary....a lot.
Found a pack of 20 from the Rainforest, listed as 4mm gold plated for £5.
I can also find some at triple, quadruple that price.

I don't need to get anything special here do I?

Ta
Click to expand...

no not really I finally got round to getting some with my Denon 2300W from a Hifi Specialist and I asked for the right number and he said they were 40p each, gold plated, paid £8 but he gave me 4 handfuls out of this massive bag and I ended up with about 20 black and 20 red.
 
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decent ones are cheap.

cheap ones are made from crap masquerading as higher quality metals.

buy from a reputable retailer. don't be buying from a third party on amazon for instance. since they are so cheap, i'd be buying from somewhere like peter tyson or richer sounds and spending the extra £5. i'd rather spend an extra fiver and know i got something decent than save a fiver and not know whether or not i bought fakes. there are tonnes of fakes on ebay and amazon.
 
Farnell ? eg http://uk.farnell.com/multicomp/25-413-1/banana-plug-24a-4mm-cable-red/dp/1698963
I usually check these kind of folks out (you have a pdf doc with the rohas & spec) to find what are the good brands even if I then find the same on ebay.
Gold plating is not the be all and end all, might be more abrasion/tarnish resistant but you do not remove them everyday, and a good grub-screw is a better option.

I believe soldering (mine are) is now deprecated since it is another metal in the circuit path, but it does take out any wiggle that might occur on the grub screw, but need a few Watts.

Having bought some 3.5mm jacks/phono's recently connectors all seem at least a £1 a shot

edit just looked on ebay all more expensive than Farnell for these - lol
 
Cheers all.
The initial ones found were a "no brand" and were 20 pieces for around £4.99
On advice from above I found some Sewell Deadbolt - 6 pair for £12.30
Fisual Easy Fix - 6 pair for £15.30

I'll grab one or the other.
With my current Onkyo receiver it's just the bare wires - no sockets for banana plugs. As the Yamaha I'm collecting on Saturday does have those sockets it just seemed the sensible way of doing things. I know I can just use the bare wires as before, but cannot help feeling the banana plugs just give that more secure connection.
 
I do like the Sewell banana plugs. I generally use the Ocelot ones, as sometimes I have the cable coming out the side and sometimes out the rear. They just make it easy.

The main thing for me is that banana plugs are easy. Much better than just the wire around the post imo. Less fiddly and the connection is as good.
 
Flibster said:
I do like the Sewell banana plugs. I generally use the Ocelot ones, as sometimes I have the cable coming out the side and sometimes out the rear. They just make it easy.

The main thing for me is that banana plugs are easy. Much better than just the wire around the post imo. Less fiddly and the connection is as good.
Click to expand...


Just to be pedantic the connection can never be "as good" as there is one extra connection in between.

Speaker wire to post.
vs
Speaker wire to banana to post.

The BEST way to connect your wires to the speakers or your amp is without any sort of banana plugs or other junk those shady "hi-fi" companies are trying to sell you.
Just wrap the wire really tight around the post and do up the clamp real tight, with aid of pair of pliers or something similar (obviously do not over do it ) and you just created the best connection you can ever have.

Banana plugs do have their uses i grant you, they allow you to interchange your equipment, and if you are doing that very regularly I'd say go with banana plugs. But if not, having any sort of extra plug, socket connection or whatever introduces another element between your music and your ears and that's exactly what you should avoid at all costs.

Another contact surface (two actually being ultra pedantic) introduces more ways to change the impedance of the system and introduce more errors. Not to mention that those plugs will almost definitely never be made from the same material as the and speaker terminals or the amp terminals, so you are adding in even more transitions between multiple metals, again a no no if you can avoid it.
 
I wouldn't be worried about the extra impedance introduced by a couple of banana plugs tbh. Feel free to bench test it and share the results though :cool:
 
Hay, I'm sure that "in theory" adding an additional plug is going to make a difference to sound. I'm sure the people who say this are the same people who sit there with £100/m speaker cable telling everyone how amazing it sounds compared to the "Amazon basics" speaker cable they could have had. :)
 
stoofa said:
Cheers all.
The initial ones found were a "no brand" and were 20 pieces for around £4.99
On advice from above I found some Sewell Deadbolt - 6 pair for £12.30
Fisual Easy Fix - 6 pair for £15.30

I'll grab one or the other.
With my current Onkyo receiver it's just the bare wires - no sockets for banana plugs. As the Yamaha I'm collecting on Saturday does have those sockets it just seemed the sensible way of doing things. I know I can just use the bare wires as before, but cannot help feeling the banana plugs just give that more secure connection.
Click to expand...

proves my point. why bother buying cheap crap and not knowing what it's made of when decent ones are only a fiver more. i'd gladly pay an extra fiver for peace of mind.
 
stoofa said:
Hay, I'm sure that "in theory" adding an additional plug is going to make a difference to sound. I'm sure the people who say this are the same people who sit there with £100/m speaker cable telling everyone how amazing it sounds compared to the "Amazon basics" speaker cable they could have had. :)
Click to expand...

are we talking analog or digital here ? :)
 
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