Spades Suck

OK. I’ve said it. Wanted to say it for a long time. Whew! That feels better. Well, a tiny wee little bit better.

I will refrain from disparaging the mental prowess of the person who came up with it, or much worse, the industry that continues to promulgate it.

For those of you who can’t imagine using anything else, think about this:

Spades… fall .. off. Well, not very often, that is because we tighten the fastener, jiggle the cable a little, tighten some more, jiggle some more, … until we hope no one moves anything or walks near anything. Anything which might, over time, jiggle the cables loose and caBLAM something shorts out and there is a big mess of a bill to pay.

The solution?

Replace ‘C’ shaped spades with one shaped like an ‘O’, i.e. a washer. Reduce the mass of the washer (and of the fasteners) if you want to improve the sound while your at it.

Won’t jiggle loose. No having to tear skin twisting the fasteners so very, very tight. Sleep better at night. Reduces stress while re-re-re-positioning of the speakers.

And it will work with 99% of the binding posts out there.

Only company I have seen do this is Acapella, and only with their cables hard-wired to the speaker crossovers [and they use a loop of braided conductor, not a washer-like doohickey].

The fact that the E.U., worried that children might receive .00001 volts by touching an exposed binding post, made manufacturers shield binding posts with plastic, but still let the children pull loose the spades and ruin $100K pieces of equipment just shows how much this industry is used to walking lemming like over the cliff of unintentional short-circuits.

OK. Get on it you cable manufacturers you. 🙂