The Best Home Theater Tool Ever

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Sometimes the simplest things are the best, my wife bought me the light pictured above as a Christmas present, it attaches to your head with an elastic band and is essentially the equivalent of the old miner's hat light. When I first looked at it I just laughed thinking it was a bit ridiculous, however, once I stopped laughing and realized my wife is usually much smarter then I am, I tried it out and I have to admit it is probably the best home theater tool I ever received.

My system is up against the living room wall so that when I pull it out to work on it there is actually very little light available in terms of seeing labels on connections. This head mounted LED light is extremely bright and allows me to both see and work on things at the same time since it leaves both hands free. I no longer need to send my eight year old upstairs when working on the system since I find there is a lot less cursing going on when I'm no longer trying to dangle a flashlight between my chin and chest while working on something. I highly recommend adding this puppy to your bag of tools.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 3:27 PM | Categories: Home Theater | | | Permalink

Monoprice Banana Plugs Review

For the longest time I wired my speakers directly into the receiver and while this works well it was always a pain connecting the wires since trying to insert the bare wire into the terminal and screw it down was difficult on the back of a crowded receiver. I'm not the most dexterous individual in the world and trying to use one hand to hold the wire in while getting the other hand to screw the terminal down was often an exercise in frustration. I always meant to have a look at banana plugs but was put off by the need to solder them. Recently I was forced to disconnect and reconnect all the speakers in order to allow my wife to do some drywall work around the system and this led me to revisit the topic.

After looking around a bit I found that Monoprice had solderless banana plugs for a great price. Since I didn't really want to go through the experience of trying to wire up my speakers again I thought I would give them a try.

The ordering process was painless and convenient and my banana plugs arrived a couple of days later. Opening the box revealed several gold plated banana plugs that looked absolutely beautiful. Installing the banana plugs was a breeze, the bottom part of each plug unscrews so all you do is thread the wire in from the top and then screw the bottom back on to secure it in place. I did have to strip the wire casing back a bit since the casing would not fit into the plug but that only added a moderate amount of effort to the install. Once I was done, hooking the speakers up took all of two minutes with none of the cramped muscles and cursing that I usually incur in the effort.

Anyways, I highly recommend this product and if you ever thought about using banana plugs I would say the effort of installing them is well worth it.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 3:27 PM | Categories: Home Theater | | | Permalink