Spades or bananas

As far as my two cents are concerned, I cannot really hear much of a difference. However, with spades you will generally get a tighter and better fit with the right kind of tools, hence a bit less chance for oxidation of the contacts. The cognoscienti generally prefer spades to bananas for better sound. But I find, I can get the same from bananas, if I can get them to fit really well and I take the trouble to clean my contacts regularly.

Funny, that nobody mentioned hardwiring the stuff. The old Quads for example, the predecessors to the 63, of HQD fame, had such horrible and flimsy posts,( as did the earlier 63s) that your best bet was to solder your speaker-cables (you had the choice of Fultons or later those marketed through Mark Levinson, the man, and made in Switzerland by the way, )right to the internal wiring, doing your best to keep clear of the transformer, which still held a hell of a wallop,if you forgot to shunt them to ground and did not wait long enough, after unplugging the speaker from the powerline. Just reminiscing...

Frank, your findings remind me of what good old Auntie Enid, Enid Lumley of yore used to say (she wrote for TAS and later for IAR, was much ridiculed for her findings then, many of which are accepted as common place now, a true pioneer she was and a golden eared one, if there ever was one)
She said, that gold plated spade-fork connectors sounded awful. She used to sandpaper her connectors down to the pure copper level to get the right sound she was after, which would point pretty much into the direction, you are pointing out. I think I'll start experimenting ....
Thanks Frank and Cheers!

Frank is dead right! ( to these here pair of ears )
bare wire or Edson Price, just as Auntie Enid used to say.
And the difference is there to be heard....just another 2 cents...

Right Frank, I suppose that was also the reason that Enid Lumley finally gave up and dissapeared from the high end. She did such a perfect dissapearing act, that nobody seems to know about here whereabouts and what she is up to. As you say, her hearing must have been incredible. Not only could she hear differences in sound with different VTAs measured almost in my, she also maintained ( rightly probably to HER ears ) that you would have to find the right spot of an LP in placing it on the turntable and that every LP had a sweet spot within its 360 degrees, where you had to put your cartridge on to start playing it, for best sound.