How much to tighten your screws?

[Deleted member 15865]

Are these bare wires or Spades ?

Neither. They are banana plugs.

 

[newlash09]

I tried tightening the screws full tight. But lata mangeshkar started to choke. So I immediately loosened them back, lest the lady faint. What a relief

 

[sound1]

Neither. They are banana plugs.

Never screw banana plugs too tightly, mate. It may prematurely break and stop all the sounds with it.

 

[gotohoward]

Hi friends,

I recently discovered from experience that it doesn’t help tightening the screws on your cable connectors to the hilt. On the contrary, I have noticed that kind of suppresses the sound and you adversely impact the khanak (what’s the English word?) and airiness of the higher frequencies and the reverb on the bass. This applies to both the amp and speaker ends of the cable and whether one uses bare wire or banana plugs. In case of banana plugs, this applies to both the tightness of the internal screws that hold the wire as well as the tightness of the banana plug itself in the amp and speaker ports.

And that doesn’t mean leaving them loose. That could result in disturbances in the audio. Just don’t tighten them to the max (where you can’t turn any more). Just leave some breathing space in the end.

Of course this is from my own experience and I’d like to hear from more experienced and knowledgeable members on this. My hypothesis is when you tighten to the max, the wires inside tend to compress/deform and that can have an impact on the surface area for the current. But I have seen a remarkable difference in the sound of my system when I corrected it.

I'm not sure it matters at all. You certainly don't want to use a wrench or peel your finger skin off with the last ounce of strength you have to tighten the screws. It's much more important to get a reliable connection metal to metal (not plastic being clamped down on). Any sound difference by leaving them more loose is probably imagined, and worse, creating a loose and unreliable connection at some point, if not immediately. I could solder the connection onto the post to get a reliable connection, but that would be a fool's errand when you get around to taking it off.

 

[availlyrics]

Due to the ductile and malleable nature of copper, even after over tightening of the screw terminals, wires will feel loose after few months. I tin bare copper using solder wire and apply light oil mineral oil to protect from corrosion effects. Solder is more resistive than bare clean copper but copper oxidises fast, becoming kinda "semi conductor". Also its a good practice to cut and strip wires after a year or two for better contact

 

[alpha1]

Everyone here knows, right, that waves get internally reflected when there is a change in physical properties (permeability and permittivity) of the medium ... ? This would happen at the interface of cable material and the screw threads. This internal reflection may smear the impulses.
However, I am really keen to understand how over tightening or under tightening will change this phenomenon?

 

[drlowmu]

Associated with this thread, many I have known would never use banana plugs in high quality audio, as they are non linear in their design and construction and fidelity, VS a good spade lug.

I physically compress my copper wires into a barrel terminal, with an large industrial vice, sometimes use just a hammer, and lightly solder the resulting VERY tight wire - to - barrel physical connection.

Jeff