I hit an interesting (and painful) problen during the installation of on-wall speakers with in-wall cabling.
With true on wall speakers, there is no room round the back for banana plugs, even 90 degree ones. I’ve done this many times in the past and the simple answer was always tinned bare wire connections. It’s always worked. It’s always been reliable.
But I let OCD get the better if me for a new higher end setup where several on-wall speakers have in-wall conduit running to a large banana socket plate behind the hifi. I thought to terminate things “better” (whatever that means) and hit the conundrum.
I use pre-tinned custom install cable made for the speakers. It’s inpissible to snake cable with any terminations on through conduit. So any terminations applied must be done after that. I’ve just put my back out soldering the first 8 banana plugs of 44 terminations in a hard to reach places (for the back of the termination plate, not the speakers). Clearly completing this task (the remaining locations are worse, like high up on the wall) without being able to use the workbench and clamp is unfeasible.
So do I stick with bare wire (with nail polish to prevent loosening of nuts behind the wall that I can’t easily retighten)? Go with screw on spades or the new deadbolt spades?
Crimping (which I favour when soldering is impracticle) can’t be used because it’s not suitable for pre-tinned conductors.
Would the type of conduit that opens up be an option. The top folds open and clicks down after the cable is laid inside. Not feeding of cables required.
This might not be suitable for your desired end result, but I think my solution to this would be:
Make short extension leads, banana on one end, tinned on the other.
The wires in the wall are tinned on one end.
Join the 2 tinned ends together using Wago clips.
I’ve used those in non audio contexts. In this case the leads that come out of the amp are tidy soldered banana plugs at both ends. They go to a wall plate that has all banana sockets.
This problem is about terminating the wires that go between the back of the plate (that accepts bare wire or banana plug but not spade), and speakers that accept anything but as they lie flush with the wall can only use spade or bare wire.
Not a solution for your cable termination but might I suggest Loctite instead of nail polish. Loctite is the registered trademark name so hopefully there is a Japanese equivalent
I’m sort of toying with the idea of using the cable snake to measure all the runs of cable off the 200m drum of DALI Connect I have. Then soldering spades on for the speaker ends at the workbench. Pulling them through again from the unterminated end and then using either bare wire or deadbolt banana plugs round the back of the plate.
The blue one - 242! Red (263) requires heat to remove and is meant to be permanent. I don’t think you need that in this application.
Any reason you couldn’t have just used passthrough wall plates and feed the spades straight into the speakers? This is what I did with my wall-mounted nSats, though with banana plugs.
I’ve used a passthrough plate for the sub leads and also HDMI. Even for the more modest AV system in another room. And for main stereo I’ve gone with just two cables on the floor. For the big AV system though, a passthrough was going to be a pain with 11 speakers. If the rack moves, that’s a huge amount of rewiring to snake through. Or it’s a crazy amount of slack to deal with. A wall plate definitely provided the better solution in this scenario.
This was the magic solution. But I used Loctite 222 Weak Thread Bond. It’s a stationary screw after all.
Turns out after testing, banana plugs can only be used on one side. The bore is not long enough for two. So if you use banana plugs round the back plate and then insert one on the front, it pushes the rear one out. So bare wire with Loctite round the back and proper banana plugs between amp and plate in front.
Please, please, please tell me that the fact that it’s INPISSIBLE to snake cables through a conduit was deliberate. If not then it’s the best typo, ever, in the history of the world.
