Tom Evans Audio Design Store

Do you know what’s in your speaker cable binding posts?


Most people would answer this with the statement “They’re gold platted”, and of course you may well be correct, however the biggest factor effecting the sound of these is not what they’re covered in, it’s what is being covered in the first place!

Virtually all binding posts on your speakers or your amplifier will be a combination most likely based around Brass. Sadly, Brass is a diabolical audio component. Covering it with gold, or indeed some other exotic metal, may well stop it tarnishing, but it does little to mask the brittle, glaringly hard and poorly detailed sound. What’s that we hear you say “my system sound great!”. Well that may well be the case, but the point we’re making is, if it sounds great now, your going to be stunned into silence when you hear how good it could be.

The irony is of course that manufacturers spend massive amounts of time and money to produce what they feel to be the best amplifier they can make, speaker manufacturers just the same. Also, we’re all well aware of the huge improvements that quality cable can make. And yet, for the most part, all of this effort is thrown to the dogs by just this one item in the signal chain. Your binding posts.

Some time ago, we realised that the binding posts were dramatically effecting the sound of our amplifiers, so, we set about trying to find something that would do the job much much better. It turned out to be no mean feet. One of the very very best transmitters for an audio signal is copper. Not the cheap Copper/Nickel that most companies use but pure solid oxygen free Copper. Milled from a solid bar. We discovered the very special benefits of pure Copper and so thought we would pop to the local machine shop and have some made up. Wrong again! Not only did we find out just how many versions of pure Copper where available (would you believe over fourteen!), we also discovered that the purest oxygen free Copper bar we wanted is very expensive. More over we discovered that most machine shops can’t work with it. Because of softness of it as a material, it becomes very sticky when being turned, consequently, special tooling and equipment is required to work with it and very few companies have this.

Once we tracked down a company willing to work with it, we were astonished with the finished article. They weigh over 40 grams each and have a very low DC resistance with a huge surface area. The internal wire connection to these is made with a allen key grub screw crimping the cable which you insert into a hole, so no horrible solder joints (an even bigger ruination for your signal).

We suggest to avoid the copper tarnishing over time, that you paint over them with a clear nail varnish available pretty much anywhere (come on guys, we know you already have some in your bedroom draw).

So what is the result of fitting these wonder sockets - Nothing short of startling! Once you’ve heard it, you’ll realise that any other binding post is a sonic compromise.

Available as a set of Four