Speaker cable question

[nohav]

I just received some nice 14g speaker wire from Ascend and wanted recommendations on the best way to connect my Rotel receiver and Sierra Towers. I had previously been using a pair of Monster cables with pin connectors on both ends. These worked fine and when I bought them, some 20 years ago, they were one of the few "better" cables available. I only have a run of 6 feet from my receiver to my 3 front speakers. I recall seeing it was better to twist the red/white and green/black pairs of wires, but this leaves a very fat section of bare wire which doesn't wrap around the posts cleanly. The Towers have a hole in the posts for insertion, but my receiver does not and I am worried about poor contact and possible shorting. I considered buying banana plugs, but most places only rate them down to 12g wire and I suspect 2 strands of 14g are thicker than that. If I thin them down on the ends, don't I negate some of the advantage of buying heavy gauge wire in the first place?

Suggestions?

[Dark Ranger]

Hi nohav,

I've tried spades, bananas, pins, and bare wire connections and definitely prefer bananas for a quick and solid connection. A quick search turned up some results. Here are two examples of bananas that accept up to 8-gauge wire:

http://www.parts-express.com/pe/show...umber=091-1260

http://www.parts-express.com/pe/show...umber=091-1075

Here are the full search results for Parts-Express: http://www.parts-express.com/wizards...TOKEN=33738461

I haven't purchased from Parts-Express, but it seems like a good site.

I'd also recommend you contact Blue Jeans Cable. You can purchase terminators from their website. See here (scroll down a bit): http://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/speaker/index.htm. A quick look doesn't turn up suggested wire gauge, but they should be able to tell you that information.