Pomona Banana Jack Adapters, 2 Red / 2 Black

Recently we found these banana jack screw-in terminals made by Pomona Electronics, a subsidiary of Fluke. If you have, or shopped for Fluke products, you know they are well made and are extremely reliable and high quality, however there is nothing inexpensive about Fluke. These are made in 6/8/10-32 thread sizes. The standard screw terminal strip used in the ST-70 uses 6-32 machine screw threads. Here is a link to the 5699 series "Terminal Strip Banana Jack Adapter" specification sheet.What is wonderful for customers, all you do is take a screwdriver, unscrew the old terminal screws on your ST-70 speaker terminal strip, and screw in these banana jack adapters, snug them a little and you're done. Easy, simple, and you don't have to remove the tube cage or bottom cover to unsolder wires internally to install banana jack binding posts- see our engineering prototype adjacent to this paragraph. You can update your speaker terminals easily- no need to break out a soldering iron, solder, wire strippers, etc. This also saves you money in labor costs; there's no need to take your ST-70 to your local electronics tech to swap out the terminal strips and install binding posts. This seems great, right? Recall that mention of Fluke and how expensive they can be? Hold your breath, because these banana adapter posts are about $8 each, $64 for a complete set of 8 for an ST-70, plus S&H and sales tax. Now, since one can only use one pair of speakers on an ST-70, you really only need 4 adapters, cutting the cost in half. Unique, different, high quality, and with an impressive specification sheet, but not inexpensive. You can use them for clamp-style attachment using spade terminals if you so desire. Or unscrew them and put back your original 3/8 inch long, 6-32 pan head slotted screws if you sell your ST-70 and use the Pomona banana jack adapters on your next amplifier. We stress that these should be treated like a screw-in insert that converts your terminal strip to a banana jack connection. It's not intended to be used as a screw-type clamp fastener. You still need to be concerned about over tightening this banana jack post and stripping the threads. If you should strip it, you can't easily put a nut on the backside of the post threads and snug it up – however there is no room for a nut; you can try to bend the solder tab out of the way, at the risk of breaking the phenolic/paper strip.However, let's consider from a different perspective; if you were to bring your ST-70 to our shop and ask us to remove your old speaker terminal strips and install more up-to-date speaker binding posts, we can assure you that you would spend about $85 – $100 total, for parts, labor & sales tax. When you consider on those terms, we think it’s a good alternative if you want banana jacks and assuming you do the conversion, saves time, money, and the hassle of installing all new binding posts that don't permit you to use all the outputs Dynaco designed into the ST-70. Note: If you have a terminal strip with stripped threads, or a terminal nut that has worked its way loose in the insulator strip, or if the insulator is cracked or broken, you must replace with a new terminal strip before using the Pomona screw-in banana jack. Do not attempt to use in a substandard installation; you can do serious damage to the amplifier, speakers or both should you have a short.