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?