Hi, I haven't posted here before but I have found some great information and inspiration here.
I made up some adapters to allow the use of banana plugs with my Beovox S75 speakers. They are a bit of a bubba / MacGyver hybrid but they work great.
The basis is a pair of 2 pin DIN jacks I ordered from an Australian ebay seller (don't get plugs, I made that mistake first). These are solder-type with a maximum wire gauge of about 18. To start I took some Cat5 Ethernet cable and twisted the wires together into two conductors. Each conductor has 4 24-gauge solid copper wires, so they are 18 gauge equivalent. I soldered the conductors to the DIN jacks, and added some tech flex and heat shrink.
Banana plugs fit very snugly in 3/16 x .014 inch brass tube. Copper would be more conductive, but I calculate the brass is at least as conductive as 16 gauge copper wire, and I already had some. I cut these to length, about 7/8 inch, and used a dremel cutoff wheel to make two slots near one end. Then I annealed the brass by heating to dull red. After it cooled I used a blunted nail to make solder cups.
I soldered my brass tubes to the free end of the cables, and prettied it up with heat shrink.
Then I made some standoffs by gluing together pieces of a bamboo chopstick. Colored the exposed ends with magic marker, filed half-rounds into the edges with a chainsaw file. It all went together with hot glue and adhesive coated heat shrink.
Here's the finished product.
I should have made them shorter. My plan was to attach the jack assembly to the speaker stands, but the heat shrink seems to be giving good strain relief and I don't want to risk shorting the banana plugs on the metal stands.
As happy as I am with the flexibility these give me, I may just go back to the straight Cat5 cables I made with the spare set of 2 pin DIN jacks I bought. They work just as well and look cleaner. I'll always have the adapters if I need to make a change.
