I was doing some auditioning this past weekend and one of the amps was not making a good connection with my favorite speaker wire. So I did the unthinkable and stripped the bananas, at the urging of a technician friend of mine on the condition that if they did not sound better he would buy the cables from me. Actually, the banana ends were already a little beat up, so I didn't mind so much.

Well guess what? It turns out that they did sound better. What I did was compare one cable against the other before stripping both, so I was not able to test for imaging, stereo, etc., but it did sound better. And the bananas weren't cheapies either, they were soldered on BFA bananas - I like those because I can easily readjust the tightness by just slipping the tip of my pliers in the groove.

Anyhow, now I'm wondering what causes this. I've been told before that spades are usually better when they are soldered on. I also remember discussing this with Mapleshade some time back when I wanted to use their double helix with crimped on bananas and the tech recommended I not do that. Anyhow, what do others here think about this?