If you are looking to install your standard banana plugs using a pair of speaker wires, Roger from cablingplus.com has got you covered. Banana plugs are typically used to install into a regular standard home theater plate or a surround sound plate. Roger recommends using regular 16 2 speaker wire.
The first thing you need is a good set of strippers. There are two types of strippers: an economy stripper and a more fancy stripper. The fancy stripper has preset gauges built into it. Once you have the stripper, the first thing to do is to strip away the outer jacket. Slightly use the blade of the stripper to score the outside jacket enough so that you can strip the jackets. Do not go too deep as it may affect the internal jackets. Repeat this process several times so that it pulls off.
You will notice that the speaker wire has a nice pull string. You can use the string to pull out more of the cable to show. For this demonstration, Roger uses half an inch of wire. Once you have stripped the wire, twist the ends a little bit to make it easier to put into the banana plug.
Grab the positive banana plug first and insert the collar into the wire. On the end of the banana plug, there is a little spacer. Fan out the strands of the speaker wire to cover the end of the collar. Do not go down too far as you will cover up the threads, and you won’t be able to put on the barrel. Once you have fanned out the wire against the banana plug collar, insert the banana pin and screw it on as tight as you can make it.
The next step is to grab the black banana plug, put the collar on, bring up the wire, and fan it out. Again, do not cover up the threads. Once you have the wire folded over neatly, you can install the banana plug.
Now you have both banana plugs installed on your speaker cable correctly, and you can use it to install it into your particular plate. If you would like to know more about banana plugs, our speaker wire, or any of our home theater plates, please contact us at cablingplus.com.