Mysterious plug things

[Bert Coules]

Can anyone tell me what these are called? They're a sort of slightly odd distant cousin of the banana plug.

The red and black sleeves are soft plastic and pull off to reveal a hollow tube with a single grub screw; the probe-like prongs are approximately 1 mm in diameter and look as if they're designed to be cut to length if needed.

I have some loudspeakers with spring-catch connectors too small to admit the speaker wire I'm using and these would serve well, but I need a few more. I can't remember when, where (or why) I acquired these, and without a proper name I've had no luck tracking down a source.

Many thanks.

[Tim+]

I think these are them.

Unfortunately on the ?wrong? Amazon. Haven?t managed to find them on a UK site yet. It?s possible they?re called something different on this side of the pond...

Tim

[Theo]

I think 'speaker pins' is the magic word:

Theo

[Bert Coules]

Tim,

Yes, that's definitely them; thanks so much for that. What search terms did you use to track them down? Or were you already familiar with them? It's interesting that the use I thought they could be put to seems actually to be what they're designed to do.

As you've undoubtedly seen (and thanks for checking) Amazon UK lists them, but as currently unavailable. And actually, when you follow the link, Amazon US says exactly the same.

[Theo]

Last one should be

[Bert Coules]

Theo,

Thanks! "speaker pins" it is. And though your eBay link doesn't work for me, the Amazon UK one does.

[Bert Coules]

Thanks for the correction. Actually, searching eBay for "speaker pins" threw up a variant with the pin part angled which might be even more useful:

[Tim+]

I?m not familiar with them but I just tried a few terms in Google image search which is a good way of quickly finding odd things.

Try these.

[Bert Coules]

Time, thanks again. As you might now have seen, we overlapped: I found both the originals and a small variant on eBay.

[newshound]

Presumably the sockets have one or more spring thingies to engage in the grooves?

[Bert Coules]

The design is such that it's impossible to see, but a twisted piece of stranded wire inserted and removed doesn't show any markings or indentations, so perhaps not. As I said in my first post, I wonder if the shape of the prongs is to facilitate cutting them shorter.

[Brian Reay]

Interesting idea. I always thought it was to aid gripping if you use them on the speaker terminals which open when you press a button.

Not many people use them by the way. In fact, while I?ve seen them for sale etc, I don?t recall ever seeing anyone use them.

[Bert Coules]

That is the sort of terminals I have, yes, and the openings are far too small to take the stranded cable I'm using. I've tried removing some of the strands on the exposed ends but it's a messy approach, and using a short jumper connection of thinner wire also seems unnecessarily complicated, so these reducer plugs strike me as ideal. The prong part is far too long though, hence my thought about shortening them. I wonder why the terminals are made so small and incommodious?

[Tim+]

Perhaps the pertinent questions is ?why are you using such heavy gauge speaker wire?? ;-)

Until it became fashionable speaker wire always used to be skinny spaghetti like stuff. Seemed to work okay.

Tim

[The Natural Philosopher]

It does if you have a speaker with no response below 200Hz

[Dave Plowman (News)]

And before speakers became fashionable, they were simple paper coned things with a relatively high efficiency. At only some frequencies. ;-)

The gauge of cable needed is also dependant on the length. But more importantly, the damping factor of the amp. No point in having a very low impedance output if you're going to spoil it with cable resistance.

[Brian Reay]

I suspect they (the manufacturers) only allow for / expect people to use fairly thin (7/0.2?) wire, and forget about those who prefer something a bit more ?generous?. Over the years I?ve seen quite reasonable quality stereo systems supplied with speaker leads which really weren?t ?man? enough.

As for the length of the beasts in question, I assume that is so they can also be used to go through the cross holes on 4mm binding posts.

An alternative, which is probably easier to source, are crimp on ferrules- sometimes called bootlace ferrules. You need a crimp tool to fit them properly but a reasonable one, good enough for DIY use (ie it will give good results and have a reasonable life) isn?t that expensive. You can get ferrules which require the same crimp tool as spades, butts, etc and others which use a special tool.

[Bert Coules]

I wondered about those but wasn't sure of the correct name. I've ordered the screw-on speaker pins now, but just in case anyone else is after the same thing:

Thanks.

[Bert Coules]

Or rather...

[Brian Reay]

Those are the ones which required the dedicated crimp tool.

There are others which use the same tool as spade, bullet,:

The first ones have a difficult shape, if crimped with the correct tool.