Our friend Bob L from Crown gives us an update on the speaker connection issue raised in a recent inSync (TTOTD 6/8/98).
“At Crown we have started using Speakons quite often, and have been forced to get away from banana plugs, because the European Standard will no longer allow amplifiers to be sold in Europe with banana plugs (they are similar to their power connectors and there had been some problems).”
Editor’s Note: I have also seen some users in the US use Edison style AC connectors for high power speaker connections. While they are readily available, work very well, and very inexpensive – we do not recommend this practice. It only takes one mistake: Most speakers cannot handle 15 amps of 120 volts (roughly 1800 watts RMS) of 60 cycle AC, and going the other way, I KNOW the amplifier wouldn’t like it. It’s just a bad, and unsafe, idea.