I find soldering a very satisfying diy and have 120 watt adjustable iron that was reasonably priced. I have re-soldered my NACA 5 cables as I was not convinced they were very well done initially (they were previously owned). I now find myself purchasing all sorts of cheap kits to assemble including a headphone amp with tubes, a bench power supply and led light bulbs that have a small PCB some diodes and capacitors and 30 led’s to solder. So far they have all been successful and seem to last well. Great pastime and it keeps my ageing hands dexterous.
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Oooh I didn’t think of preheating the pin. Yes, that definitely would have helped.
Perhaps I should have had an expert do it after all!
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Most of them aren’t competent engineers and wouldn’t think of preheating either!
I tend to apply the iron to the top of the banana plug in any case and let the heat flow to the copper wires from there, which it does quite easily as the wires are tightly packed into the slot on a Naim plug. So the plug will be as hot as the wire.
Yeah that’s exactly what I did too
You certainly wouldn’t do it the other way round. Firstly you’d overheat the wire (it’s more sensitive to heat than the pin, principality because of the insulation, but also because of the lower temperatures that will cause an increase in oxidation), secondly the thermal conductivity between the heating element and the joint would be insufficient if it has to go via all the separate strands of the wire.
I have my naca5 bare on speaker end I did have deltron and found them not as good as bare wire the amp end I have naim dual professionally soldered.
It’s a funny old world. D**k Shahinian (of loudspeaker fame) was of the opinion that solder should be avoided, and recommended that his speakers were hooked up with bare wire connections, or screw-down banana plugs. Sacrilege in Naimland.
It’s strange.
All the fuss about only the perfect soldered joint will do, yet if you take a look at the inside of a NAP110, the connectors at the amp board is a spade connector, which I’m sure is crimped onto the wire. The other end of the wire also isn’t soldered onto the speaker socket. 
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True - though I suspect that might be related to the way those wires are not going to be moving much relative to the socket, thanks to all the cable ties, and also that the connections aren’t going to be broken and remade very often, if ever.
Neither of those is true for speaker cable and plugs.
Mark
Odd. the speaker terminals on both my NAP110s are soldered (admittedly neither is as early as the one you show here). Are you sure those aren’t soldered too? Perhaps @NeilS can comment.
You are correct.
I have two NAP110’s. One is as photo, the other has wires soldered into the speaker sockets and there is no facility to clamp a bare speraker cable wire onto the socket.
Both of mine have the early style binding posts, but both are soldered on the inside.
The spade connectors in the 110 get pretty cruddy. It’s a good idea to separate them and reconnect them from time to time, to ensure a good connection. Similar to disconnecting and reconnecting DIN plugs.
I had a look on U-tube at videos of people soldering, and there were a couple that made a real mess of things. Most seem to tin the wire and connector separately, then join them. I realise that you wouldn’t be able to do this on connectors that only just fit the wire. The basic recommendation was a hotter iron, but short time on the joint.
The binding post speaker sockets are soldered, but via a ring tag that is then bolted to the thread of the post.
Regards
Neil.
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Bare wire mechanical connections using copper can work very well and have long term reliability, provided you have five factors in play
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Each strand of the copper is in direct contact with the contact surface (strands cannot rely on contact via other strands).
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Either contact pressure is extremely high (high enough to exclude oxygen and moisture) or the connection is maintained in an inert (non-oxidising environment).
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The connection is either not subject to vibration or thermal cycling or the compression structure has no moving parts (such as screws) or such moving parts have a system in place to any prevent significant movement after assembly.
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The contact pressure is sufficient to deform the conductor ensure a contact area largely similar to that of the cross sectional area of the conductor.
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Both mating surfaces are essentially free of contamination before the connection is formed.
In effect, a properly made solder joint achieves all these requirements!
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Yes I agree a proper solder joint done professionally is better I done this on amp end but not speaker end, I tried myself but I reckon I got the banana connection wrong it did not sound better than bare wire so I will use bare wire until maybe move to super lumina.
I feel a " how to solder properly " thread coming on…
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