★★★★★ 3
Get the right wire guage
Size: 1 Count (Pack of 1), Pattern Name: Banana Plugs
I rate the banana plugs themselves 4 stars. They are everything I expected and work as advertised. It's the experience of assembly that I rate three stars. The way these work is -- you strip off the outer insullation of your wire and separate the two leads (positive and negative). Then you strip some length of insulation off the end of one of your leads, you unscrew the banana plug so that it separates into its respective base (lower) and contact (upper) halves, you slip the wire up through the base, you flare the copper strands of the wire and fold the individual strands over the very top of the base (about 1/16 of an inch) (taking care not to extend the strands over the threaded barrel of the base), then you screw the upper contact onto the lower base and voila, banana plug / wire assembly. It's not as complicated as it sounds. Go to the Monoprice website and watch their excellent instructional video.
Here's the thing though. While the assembly is not complicated, it is tricky, and if you don't get your proportions right the first or second or third time, you'll have to do it over. Fist of all, if your wire guage is relatively thin, like my 16-guage speaker wire, you'll find that the entire wire, insullation and all, will slip right through the base of the plug without butting up against the bottom of the base. If this is the case, then the wire is left to sort of flop around inside the plug and that has a kind of unfinished, amateur look and feel to it, whereas if the wire butts up against the bottom of the base, it has a solid, one-piece professional look. So, to my mind, there's a sweet-spot for wire guage that works best with this plug -- not too thin and not too thick. And since Monoprice has debunked the thicker-is-better myth (the quality of the copper is the real determinant), then you should feel free to get the wire guage that fits the plug.
Next -- and here's where it gets tricky -- once your copper extends beyond the top of the base, you'll need to limit this extension to about a sixteenth (no greatrer than a fourth) of an inch. Then you very delicately flare out the individual strands, in a 360- degree arc, and fold the strands over the top of the base. This takes a fair degree of manual dexterity, especially if the wire is "floating" inside the base and its travel is not stopped where the insullation meets the base. You'll have to hold the wire and base steady in the fingers of one hand, then flare out the wire strands with either your fingers or a suitable object (the working end of a ball-point pen worked for me) with the other hand. This one-sixteenth measure is important. If you extend wire strands beyond the top and over the threads of the base, you'll find that screwing the contact end onto the base is impossible and you'll need to start over. One or two strands is OK and almost unavoidable. In that case the screwing will catch but if you take a pair of pliers to it you can muscle through. By the way, you can avoid the whole mess by getting the open-screw type, which I'm sure will work just as well without any of the hassle of assembly.
Like anything else, if you do it a few times to make the mistakes and learn the tricks, then it will become second nature, and if you've already done that, then my review might seem overly fussy. In that case feel free to leave comments to help other readers.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2012
