Recommendations for banana plugs for Vista speakers

[Gordon Gray]

Agree with my friend.

Only issue is how you connect amp wire / jumper wire to speaker terminals and what terminations (lug vs banana vs z post vs bare wire) you use.

The latter has been discussed above. Regarding the former, you have three choices.

1) Speaker cable to both upper terminals. Jumpers to lower.

2) The reverse of 1).

3) "Diagonal jumping", which I started a thread on about a month or so ago. See "Off Topic" for further info.

I currently use 3) with the + speaker cable from the amp hooked up to upper + at the speaker and the - speaker cable from the amp hooked up to the lower - at the speaker. Both of the these connections are lug. Bananas are used from the above with lug connects at the other speaker terminals.

I had DH Labs (my speaker wire) make me solid silver jumpers / expandable banana at one end - lug at the other.

Have fun.

GG

PS: Generally accepted that the stock ML jumper plates are, at best, marginal.

 

[twich54]

What jumpers would you recommend?

and to further what I and Gordon have just said...............I use 'none' , rather I bi-wire with Signal Cable's Ultra speaker cables. Again, IMO, it's the cleanest approach.

 

[Gordon Gray]

Dave is absolutely correct.

Assuming you can bi-wire, this is the way to go.

You'll need to have the "speaker" end of the wire terminated with 2 pairs of lugs. Just make sure your wire is of sufficient "gauge" to do so.

Or, if your amp has two sets of speaker terminals, you can run two sets of wire per side but that can get expensive.

In my case, Darren of DH Labs thought the better way to go in my case, with my speaker, was to employ jumpers.

GG

 

[Bernard]

In my case, Darren of DH Labs thought the better way to go in my case, with my speaker, was to employ jumpers.

GG

Is it possible that with YG this was NOT the better way to go, hence they sounded unacceptable? :devil:

 

[Gordon Gray]

Maybe Bernard but I think not.

All demos I heard had YG's jumper plate installed and the reviews I read did not indicate anyone bi-amping or bi-wiring.

I used my DH Labs solid silver jumpers when I auditioned and these are far superior to the factory supplied product.

 

[Brad225]

The flat metal plates, that are probably gold maybe brass plated copper aren't in my opinion the best conductor between bass and upper end posts. You can improve the conductivity for not a great amount of cash. Whether you hear any difference will depend on you entire system.

 

[InterMechanico]

The flat metal plates, that are probably gold maybe brass plated copper aren't in my opinion the best conductor between bass and upper end posts. You can improve the conductivity for not a great amount of cash. Whether you hear any difference will depend on you entire system.

Mine were Tinned steel. Tin is a decent conductor but it's very cheap.

 

[Bevensee]

Just wondering: If the jumpers really make a difference, then how about the inside of the speaker? Surely that must be even worse...

 

[twich54]

Just wondering: If the jumpers really make a difference, then how about the inside of the speaker? Surely that must be even worse...

??????? ...... no, actual copper wiring is used.

 

[Gordon Gray]

??????? ...... no, actual copper wiring is used.

Hi Dave,

I was playing nice. Seems like someone else wanted to start a food fight.

Gordon

 

[twich54]

Hi Dave,

I was playing nice. Seems like someone else wanted to start a food fight.

Gordon

Gordon, totally understood, just trying to clean up the shark pond !!

 

[Gordon Gray]

If beanbag wants to make a constructive comment regarding this thread versus trying to pick a fight with me, please have at it Mr. ******.

Otherwise, you may want to consider the "sharks" you allow in the pond.

 

[beanbag]

If beanbag wants to make a constructive comment regarding this thread versus trying to pick a fight with me, please have at it Mr. ******.

Otherwise, you may want to consider the "sharks" you allow in the pond.

How about first you have the mod put back my original post so that everybody can see and decide just how pugnacious it really is?
Then, you can respond normally to it.

PS: I don't know what got you suddenly worked up, but now I am curious to find out.

 

[Gordon Gray]

Hi beanbag,

You'll have to ask Dave why he deleted it as well as my response to your post, which stated that "you will have to look elsewhere if you want confrontation."

GG

 

[upinsmoke]

I got received my new banana plugs yesterday evening. Very nice quality. Those will be incorporated into the system either tonight or this weekend. It still amazes me that they were so much cheaper through the vendors listing on the big A than their own site.

I was thinking about the whole jumper matter too. Would I even really need to get spades for them? Couldn't I just use pieces of my speaker cable stripped, slid into the post holes and just tightened down - then insert the bananas? I would think those jumper pieces would never budge unless you loosened up the posts again. The bananas would be independent of the rest of it as it just goes through the back. IDK.

 

[twich54]

I was thinking about the whole jumper matter too. Would I even really need to get spades for them? Couldn't I just use pieces of my speaker cable stripped, slid into the post holes and just tightened down - then insert the bananas?

yep, that would be fine

I would think those jumper pieces would never budge unless you loosened up the posts again. The bananas would be independent of the rest of it as it just goes through the back. IDK.

correst

 

[beanbag]

Hi beanbag,

You'll have to ask Dave why he deleted it as well as my response to your post, which stated that "you will have to look elsewhere if you want confrontation."

GG

ummmm...

I think one post was asking why the stock ML jumpers were so bad.
And the other post asked you to quantify some metric of the "bad" sounding jumpers compared to the "good" ones.
How is that looking for confrontation?

 

[Gordon Gray]

They are "marginal" based on myself and others, who are forum members and have replaced them with something else and have reported good results. As in the speaker sounds better.

I assume that has to do with better quality materials and their respective conductive properties. I'm not a metallurgist but anecdotally, that seems to be what's happening.

That's the best explanation I can give.

If you still use the stock jumpers, you can certainly fabricate some or order a set off the internet and test / listen for yourself. Pretty easy and you might be pleasantly surprised.

Good luck.

GG

PS: So I looked up the resistivity / conductivity for various materials. Here's the top nine with the first offering the "best" transmission of electrical energy based on the above parameters and the last being the worst of the materials listed.

Silver, copper, annealed copper, gold, aluminum, calcium, tungsten, zinc, and nickel. The values reveal that silver and copper are pretty close. Comparing silver to nickel, nickel is 4.4 times more resistive than silver. Hope that helps.

 

[upinsmoke]

They are "marginal" based on myself and others, who are forum members and have replaced them with something else and have reported good results. As in the speaker sounds better.

I assume that has to do with better quality materials and their respective conductive properties. I'm not a metallurgist but anecdotally, that seems to be what's happening.

That's the best explanation I can give.

If you still use the stock jumpers, you can certainly fabricate some or order a set off the internet and test / listen for yourself. Pretty easy and you might be pleasantly surprised.

Good luck.

GG

PS: So I looked up the resistivity / conductivity for various metals. Here's the top nine with the first offering the "best" transmission of electrical energy based on the above parameters and the last being the worse of the metals listed.

Silver, copper, annealed copper, gold, aluminum, calcium, tungsten, zinc, and nickel. The values reveal that silver and copper are pretty close. Comparing silver to nickel, nickel is 4.4 times more resistive than silver. Hope that helps.

Thanks Gordon (and to everyone else that chimed in). My evening freed up (with the exception of the dental appt. I'm heading to after this post lol) so I'm going to give that try tonight.

 

[beanbag]

They are "marginal" based on myself and others, who are forum members and have replaced them with something else and have reported good results. As in the speaker sounds better.

I assume that has to do with better quality materials and their respective conductive properties. I'm not a metallurgist but anecdotally, that seems to be what's happening.

I used a 4 point technique to measure the contact resistance and internal resistance of one of my "crappy sounding" vista OEM jumpers. I came up with a total value of 350 MICRO-ohms per jumper, including contact resistance thru the speaker wire spades and binding posts. Included in this is an internal resistance (i.e. not including contact resistance thru the surface) of 100-130 MICRO-ohms resistance.

So two jumpers combined have less than 1 MILLI-Ohm of total resistance.

For reference 1 foot of one-way fat 10 gauge wire has 1 milli-ohm of resistance.
The panel crossover electronics have about an ohm or less of resistance put there on purpose.
The woofer section has an inductor (long coil of thin wire) and 4 ohms of wire in the woofer coil.

The jumper resistance will knock down the signal of the unfortunate side of the crossover by some tiny fraction of a percent. This is less than the normal tolerance of the crossover components anyway. It doesn't screw up the phase or create distortion in any other way, so I would only expect an imperceptible reduction in volume. I saw your diagonal jumper post and that would at least even out this degradation to both halves of the crossover. (BTW, the Nordost and Audioquest methods are electrically equivalent)

Perhaps if the jumpers had a softer coating the contact resistance can be reduced. I still doubt it would make a difference in sound quality.

So there ya go. It's an attempt to quantify the effects you are talking about. I think it's constructive and illuminating.