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How to connect wire to banana plug?
A shopper
on Feb 17, 2018
BEST ANSWER:Strip the speaker wire, unscrew the banana plug, run the speaker wire through bottom of the banana plug until the copper of the speaker wire appears, curl the copper wire around the edge of the banana plug, screw the top of the banana plug to the bottom of the banana plug. Done.
BEST ANSWER:Strip the speaker wire, unscrew the banana plug, run the speaker wire through bottom of the banana plug until the copper of the speaker wire appears, curl the copper wire around the edge of the banana plug, screw the top of the banana plug to the bottom of the banana plug. Done.
I bought quite a few sets of these during 20% off sales and have been pretty happy with them. They accept fairly heavy cable gauges depending on the thickness of the insulation (maybe 12 gauge?). No crimping or permanent connection is needed and once the plug is screwed down, it is basically impossible to accidentally pull them out. You may need to tighten or loosen the female end for best fit.
There are other designs available from other manufacturers that are far better than these. The barrel of these is longer than it needs to be, but the bigger problem is that the knurling is very sharp, and the interior design doesn't work as well as found in other designs.
Specifically, other manufacturers put a kind of serration or teeth on the end of the connector where the stranded wire will come out and be secured when the barrel is tightened, but these have a smooth connection. This provides less room for the wire to spread out and adjust to the clamping force being used as the barrel is tightened back down.
This issue is compounded by the knurling being so sharp. After assembling just a few of these, my fingers are already starting to hurt, and by the time I'm done with a complete speaker setup, I'm in a lot of pain.
Monoprice does sell a different style of banana plug connector, but I haven't tried it because the per-plug cost is so much greater than for these or the better-designed competitors from other manufacturers.
These get the job done, but there are much better options out there. IMHO Monoprice should abandon this particular design and figure out a way to economically copy those better ones.
The plugs feel nice and are not too bad to attach to cables, provided they're the normal rather than the Monoprice flat cable. Not a big deal, but worth mentioning. The way I connected these was to run the cable through the end and fold the bare wire over the edge, being careful not to get wire on the threads. Doing that made connection not too bad.
I used these connectors with 12 gauge stranded speaker wire. To make the connectors work better, the banana jack should be removed. Then the barrel removed and stripped wire threaded inside with about 1/8" extending that is folded over the end. Thread barrel back on and over folded wire. A small nub of wire should be seen where the banana jack was removed. Pull wire out a bit then thread on the banana jack. That should do it! Secure and tight fitting that should make good contact to speaker outputs/RCA jacks.
