Performance sits at the heart of the QED cable range, above Connect and below Reference and Signature. These speaker spades are the termination QED fits to its Performance Speaker Cable, offered here as a matched pair so you can buy exactly the number of connectors your installation needs.
Airloc cold weld termination
Airloc is QED's cold weld system for permanently attaching Performance banana plugs and spades to QED Performance Speaker Cable. Instead of a soldered or screw-clamped joint, the process squashes the conductors and the connector barrel together under pressure until they form a homogenous contact area, bringing the resistance of the joint to a minimum. Because all the air has been driven out of the joint, the contact surfaces cannot oxidise, so that low resistance is retained for the lifetime of the cable.
Fitting is a job for a dealer or installer: QED states that its Airloc crimp tool is required by any installer of the Airloc termination.
Materials and finish
The connector body is solid brass. Brass has roughly twice the resistivity of copper, so QED designs the cross-sectional area of its Performance plugs and spades to be at least double that of the cable to which they are connected, effectively cancelling out the extra resistance of the connector material. The contact surfaces are then plated in high purity 24K gold, which has a resistivity almost as low as copper but does not oxidise in air.
The barrel carries the new Performance silver-grey connector finish, protected by an extremely durable acrylic lacquer similar to that used in the musical instrument industry. The lacquer has a very high voltage withstand and will not wear off, keeping the connectors electrically isolated from one another.
Supplied as a pair
Each pair contains one spade with a red identification ring and one with a black ring, so positive and negative are easy to tell apart at both the amplifier and the loudspeaker. A single two-core cable run terminated at both ends needs two pairs. QED also makes a 4mm banana plug version of the same Performance termination for equipment with sockets rather than binding post screws.