Review on 🔌 Monoprice Affinity Series Speaker Banana Plug with 24k Gold – 10 Pairs by Brandon Guidroz

If you're looking to spend banana plugs on your stereo these are good! They're really gold plated and made out of a really thin alloy. You can see the picture I took of the plugs on my beautiful Polk Audio Monitor 60 speaker. There are some issues with the Affinity series banana jacks during installation, mainly due to the aluminum alloy body. I would definitely recommend getting a 12AWG or 14AWG cable just for these Affinity series plugs. The reason for this is that 10 AWG will most likely not get past the main body and into the smaller hole leading to the banana plug, although a heavier gauge wire can be placed in the main area. The cleaning screws MUST be flush or recessed under the gold plated case. If either of the opposing bolts isn't flush and you can feel it with your thumb when you rub the fork body, the aluminum body isn't fully engaging the fork and you won't be able to thread the body all the way in. The pan head screws are pretty strong and won't come loose unless you're an idiot trying to rip the top off. This is where the 10 AWG wire can put you in a situation where you remove the head of the screw as there isn't enough room to push the screw further in unless you thin the wire down to 12 gauge. Using Monoprice's 12AWG wire worked, although the aluminum cap had to be pushed and pulled back a few times to get the screws flush or slightly countersunk into the body of the connector to screw them in further. It took a hell of a long time to make 16 of these and my fingers hurt afterwards! As you can see from the photos, inside the connector body is a small piece of black heat shrink tubing that is included and fits into the 12AWG plastic cable housing. So if you are using 14AWG wire, you can push this tube further into the wire body to tighten with screws. In the 12AWG package, the extra tubing makes it impossible to tighten the bolt so that it is flush or countersunk in the housing. I just used heat shrink tubing to measure where I'm going to strip the wire so it's 100% going through the smaller inner hole. I then use heat shrink tubing to leave it on the end so it fits snugly over the end screw. You don't have to use heat shrink tubing and don't use it at all. The second issue I have with the aluminum case is that it can come loose very easily. The slightest twist when installing on speakers or a receiver loosens the case. To install using 12AWG Monoprice pure copper cable, I did the following: 1) Split the 2-wire cable down the middle into 2-1/2 banana jack lengths (full length) 2) Loosen and remove both screws from each jack. Also remove the included black heat shrink tubing from each slot. 3) Use the included black heat shrink tubing and place it over one of the copper wire sleeves. 4) Use Figure 7 as a guide for where to cut the cable housing. You can cut open the case to expose more copper wire. Don't cut it too short though as you will want to stuff 100% bare copper wires into a 12 gauge hole inside the banana jack body and have all of the strands touching the inside. Cut off just enough so that all of the copper is in the hole and the top screw fits snugly into the plastic case. I would not recommend tightening the screw against copper strands as this can flatten and spread the strands or break the strands if tightened further. Using your fingers, twist the strands as tightly as possible. 6) Insert the cable into the case making sure the open end goes through the small hole on the end and that the entire open end goes through the small hole and touches the end of that small hole. If your stranded copper wire twists, just repeat step 4.7) After threading the cable through that tiny 12 gauge hole, just make sure the cable stays in place and quickly insert the top scraper screw, pull 8) Tighten the bottom screw 9) Make sure the opposing screws are flush - feel the screw heads as you rub against the body of the jack. Tighten a quarter turn and feel again. 10) Attach the aluminum cover and screw it in place. If the housing cannot be screwed all the way in, you will need to remove it and re-tighten one or both cleaning screws a quarter turn until the screws are flush or countersunk in the connector housing. You will determine if the housing is fully bolted to the socket. The bottom of the socket body is recessed by approximately 2mm. Using black heat shrink tubing as a gauge, when slid barely visibly into the bottom screw hole, the tubing will only show about 3-5mm after the body is properly screwed in (see first picture). By the way, I didn't use any shrink tubing. But you can do it with 14AWG or smaller wire.