Neutrik NL4 MP-ST

I help to run a village show and I discovered that my predecessor had been hiring a PA system each year and being charged as much as it would cost to buy one. So, I did the obvious thing and bought one.

This is a PA system with a 100v connection to horn speakers for making announcements at an outdoor event. I discovered that the equipment sold for this purpose assumes that it will be installed by an electrician using a screwdriver to connect cables from the amplifier to the speakers and then to each other. This seemed to me a bit crazy - to be doing the same wiring job from scratch every time we run a show - so I decided to make up a cable with a plug at one end for the amplifier and a junction box containing sockets for the speakers at the other end.

So, at last, to the review. The Neutrik Speakon connectors are what I used in the junction box. I am really rotten at soldering so I bought the connector with screw terminals. They work well, and making the connections was pretty straightforward, except that it was really difficult to get a screwdriver in at the right angle when the connectors were mounted in the junction box. Even when I unscrewed the connectors from the junction box it was hard because of the limited space. Also, the screw-in version of the connectors is really too deep for the standard box I bought. In the end everything was ok and the connectors work well and give me the robust connection to the speakers that I as looking.

You might say that the connectors were not the cause of my problems, and you may well be right, but Speakon seems to be the only viable alternative to the electrician with his screwdriver and big labour charge, and I don't know of any other way to connect speakers in parallel other than via a junction box, so if there is anyone out there trying to do something similar, you need to be aware that it isn't as easy as it appears. Actually, there is a commercially available Speakon junction box, but it costs £130. I think I see why, now.