Your thoughts please


I have a 10 year old Acurus a250 amp...great amp...with plastic screw-down caps on the speaker connection posts. An audio salesman told me not to get spades because the connection would not be good.....is this true? The banana "hole" in the plastic cap doesn't accept the full length of my bananas so I had to get a step down plug....is this not a desireable way to connect cables to the amp? Should I just go with bare wire? Am I making too much of this? Thanks.
rbfletch
Bare wire treated with a little ProGold to prevent corosion is best IMO.I have found that plastic screw downs do not stay screwed down on spades,they must constantly be re tightened.
I had plastic screw-downs on my Sunfire SRA, but figured that base under them is metal and they're simply for color purposes. I removed them leaving only the metal caps which I colored with permanent marker and if I ever need to tighten stronger than hand-tight, I can use pliers or small vise-grip.
Sometimes, the simplest solutions are the best ones!
How is the resulting sound? Do you actually hear a difference?
After years of believing that (and implementing) spades and bananas were needed, I have gone back to bare wire with a little ProGold on the ends and feel this is the best method sonically.
Bare wire, if you can get away with it as proscribed above. You can also try tinning the lead ends with some solder, lightly applied, to resist oxidation and corrosion.

All the best,
Nonoise