Please help me clean up this stupid speaker cable mistake

Thanks for the suggestion shkong. That’s a straight forward and economical solution which hadn’t occurred to me. Appreciate your help.

David, I do believe they are directional. Thanks,

Mike

Thanks tubegb, I’ll look around for a wider variant. Also should I be trying to find a silver rather than gold adapter since the banana jack is silver, or wouldn’t it make any difference?

Mike

Thanks again Thomas. I hadn’t ordered yet, so I’m good. I was only wondering if matching the metals made any difference. You never know what might be important when it comes to cabling.

mental, I was hoping not to have to waste any more money on correcting a stupid mistake after dropping $650 on the speaker cables already. But sometimes you do have to pay for your mistakes, literally.

tubegb, if your ears can’t tell the difference I’m guessing mine won’t either.

David, What does WBT mean? The reason I can’t pick up another properly terminated cable after spending $650 on these is that I have other non-audio related things I’d like to purchase and not an unlimited budget. Sad but true.

maxima, I can’t return these as it was an Ebay purchase from an individual and not from a store. That’s what happens when you think you’ve found a bargain sometimes, and rush a purchase. From what some of you are saying about adding additional connectors to the signal path, maybe I’ll just suck it up and re-terminate these with Audioquest’s recommended 500 series spades. It’s a $69 dollar lesson, could be worse, for four replacement spade terminals.

grannyring so nice of you to offer. The 500 Series terminals simply screw on so I’m comfortable doing that. If I’m lucky I might be able to reuse one of the bi-wires banana terminations to house two wires, but I’m guessing Audioquest doesn’t make them so they can be disassembled, reused or refit like some manufacturers do. It’s difficult  to believe, now that I think about it, the tech I spoke to didn’t know if they could be or not.

markalarsen, Audioquest wanted $100 to terminate them plus shipping back and forth. I simply don’t want to throw away any more money on my own stupidity. Since these are brand new the least they could have done was offer to exchange them. I’m guessing they’re not worried about repeat business.either.

Thanks all for your input.

Mike

I have to disagree with you there Bob. These Rocket 88’s are supposedly brand new in the box. I haven’t received them yet to be sure. It’s my mistake I bought the bi-wires instead of the full range, and I didn’t ask Audioquest for any favors or returns. But it wouldn’t have cost them a penny to offer to exchange them instead of asking for $100 right off the bat to rectify my error.

Good customer service buys you good will and future business. But as you say, it’s my mistake, not their’s. I’ll pay for it, but won’t be rushing out to purchase more Audioquest products, because you should take care of your customers better than that. They missed a good opportunity to go out of their way to do so and ensure my customer loyalty.

To belabor the point, I recently purchased a Shunyata interconnect after receiving some great customer service from them when inquiring about a second hand Shunyata Denali power conditioner I ended up purchasing from a third party. I even got an assurance they would honor it’s warranty. What comes around goes around.

Anyway, I’ll stop whining now.

Mike

markalarsen and dill, I purchased them from a guy in California whose been selling on Ebay for five years and has a 100% rating, so I think I’m okay. But you never know. Appreciate your concern.

millercarbon, the guys not likely a dealer, so a refund or exchange probably not in the cards. It should not be that big a deal to re-terminate them anyway or get banana spade adapters, so I’ll keep them for the nice price I got them at even with the added expense. Synergistic may well be better as you say. I based the purchase of Rocket 88’s on that being what Magico was using with their A3’s at show demos a few months ago. I figured I couldn’t go too wrong that way with what little knowledge I had of various cables.

tomic60. I had no expectation or desire for Audioquest to re-terminate the cables. I’m not so lazy I can’t do that myself. I just hoped they’d offer to swap the new in box single bi-wires for new in box full ranges straight up.

Thanks for offering to send some silver spades to complement grannyrings kind offer to re-terminate them, but I should be able to take care of that myself. You are both "the man" and will get some good karma for the offer alone. Thanks again.

glupson, how are you?

David, thank for the info on WBT.

lukeaske, appreciate your info on Pure-cable as well.

Mike

audiorustty and folkfreak. thanks for your suggestions. They may just solve this problem at zero cost with no rewiring necessary. I’ve yet to receive shipment of the A3’s, so don’t know exactly what the binding posts look like to confirm if I can do as you suggest. I tried to find a picture of the binding post online the other day but no luck. The online instruction manual didn’t show them either.

I’ll put off buying any parts now until the A3’s arrive so I can see your suggestion is workable on their binding posts. You would think they’d be the same as what’s on the other Magico’s that folkfreak has and wired that way. My old Dahlquist’s DQ-10’s have only that hole in the binding post and have been hard-wired since the seventies. You are both my heroes now. Thanks a lot. Excellent ideas.

Mike

Creekmaster, thanks for offering to send a pic, but I'm good. I emailed Magico asking if they had a similar binding post setup to what you describe, but got no response. I'll just have to wait until the A3's arrive to see if they have the extra hole in themas you describe. I bet they do, but you never know.

Kymanor, I have, thanks.

Mike

I did hear back from Magico today. The A3’s do not have an extra hole on the binding post you could a place a second banana plug into, or a bare wire for that matter. So back to square one.

I’ll most likely re-terminate one banana plug on each cable with a spade. I’ll then connect the remaining banana plug termination to the banana plug receptacle and the re-terminated pace connector to the spade receptacle on the binding post.

The 500 series spades Audioquest suggested using have screws that clamp down onto the bare wire, so it should be simple to switch them out, no soldering involved. Is there anything more to re-terminating this type of connector other than stripping back a bit of the wire and then putting it in the new termination to be screwed in place. If the wire is stranded, I’d suppose I’d twist the strands together before inserting them in the terminal, unless someone here indicates otherwise.

Again, Thanks for all your advice,

Mike

Shkong, I went ahead and ordered the silver adapters you recommended. That seemed like the simplest and most straight forward solution. Thank you for the links, and appreciate your assistance.

Mike

Mike, if the adapters don't work out that may be my next move. That was a generous offer on his part. 

Mike