jumpers versus golden plates


Does anybody have experience with kicking out the golden plates connecting the (bi-wiring) terminals on speakers and put in jumpers instead? I was told that if you don't bi-amp or bi-wire and subsequently have the plates in place you are accepting a major sound deterioration. Jumpers would be the solution.I checked with Kimber Select and the jumpers are extraordinary expensive regarding their very short length....Opinions please?
aida_w
I've owned a couple different monitors that had gold plates in place for biwiring. I have a pair of Analysis Plus Silver Oval jumpers, but run my monitors in biwired configuration 99% of the time so never really use them much. From past posts it seems pretty unanimous people that have compared both methods extensively seem to favor biwiring with quality wire as opposed to the factory supplied jumpers. DH Labs has a silver biwire jumper and Cardas also makes a terminal jumper that seems very popular. I believe Merlin uses this one. Good luck.
A simple solution is to replace the factory supplied jumper with short section of wire. This costs next to nothing and is typically a step forward. One could change gauges and materials ( copper, silver, etc... ) or even swap between solid and stranded to see what the differences were. You could do this for pennies on the dollar compared to what many of the "wire bandits" charge.

Personally, i would connect the speaker wires to the woofer section and then use a piece of solid copper 18 gauge to feed the upper section. If it sounds too bright on top, go to a 16 gauge wire. If it isn't bright enough, go to a 20 gauge wire, etc.. Hopefully, you get the idea and can extrapolate from there : ) Sean
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Aida, Sean makes a very good and economical point. When I first tried replacing the gold plated jumpers of my Sonus Faber Concertinos, I used cheap copper car stereo wire and even that was an improvement. Buying the AP silver jumpers was just to appease my audiophile-gadget-jones.