Spades Verses Bananas?

I’ll take bare wire over battered fish fingers any day.

If not using bare wire I favor banana plugs, on newer gear, if only because they are easier.

Used bare ended speaker wire in the 70’s/80’s and I’ve been using it for the past 25 years as well.

I’ve had my 26 gauge speaker wire broken by cats, but I’ve never had it come undone from the binding post (same with the 22 gauge speaker wire that I’ve been using for a few years now as well as the various bare ended Kimber Kables I used decades ago).

DeKay

When I was younger, it was always spades as I thought the connection was more secure, but now at a very much older age, I went with locking bananas.  I ordered 2 new pairs of speaker cables for both set ups and they were locking bananas on both ends.  I can’t crouch down to tighten speaker posts any longer.  Arthritis wins out every time. 

“bare” wire, crimped with high quality ferrules is the best option!

nice high quality, tellurium banana termination is practical, consistent results!

don’t forget about speaker/amp jack connectors, those sometimes are the worst / bottleneck in amp-spkr interconnects. 

some early days spades by Kimber-Kable are relatively stable, but still worse than banana plugs on the long run. 

Of course he ultimate connection is to solder the cable ends directly onto the binding posts, preferably the low-mass Cardas CPBP Single Knob Binding Post mentioned above by @corelli.

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Banana with self locking. I do like cardas connectors and copper binding posts. Amazon does  have some self locking bananas and you can stack them piggyback for multiple wire. They are screw contact for wire and some fit my 4 gauge wire. I have had spades come lose and be too small of opening and have to spread them open with needle nose to fit some amps. Good luck experimenting.enjoy the music.