Spades Verses Bananas?


Which do you prefer, spades verses bananas and why?

speedysteve4

Great stuff and good conversation.  I do not notice a difference in sound quality, but I love my cables that offer both options depending on the speakers.  Focal's and B/W's seem to like spades, JBL's work better with bananas  

Had a long talk years ago with a high end dealer in NYC. He said that ironically they both sound the same, and for a home system, where the cables are not constantly being switched, there was no downside to bananas. But that for dealers, for whom bananas were an important convenience, that the bananas would degrade...I have found this to be true in my systems...

I never compared same brand/composition/quality spades vs bananas 🍌 

I did compare copper, rhodium, gold plated and prefer gold plated connectors. Lately rhodium doesn’t agree with my ears…don’t know why…just annoys me and sounds off. 
My speakers and my amp made the decision easy - neither the speakers nor the amp accept bananas 

This is a great discussion post with lots of good points made. I agree with those who mentioned it will often depend on the speakers. I've had speakers with binding posts that prefer spades, other times they are terrible with spades. Same with bananas where sometimes the binding post angle makes it really impractical to keep a solid banana connection.

All things being equal, I might prefer a spade if I knew I would not be changing anything for the long term. Knowing my style I do like swapping gear often so a well made banana connector works better from that point of view.