Best way to make speaker/power wires look GOOD at the amp inputs? (spade/ring terminal amps)

[wellington]

So I had a long conversation about this with a guy at frys.

It seems there is really no option for making spade terminals (or ring terminals) to look really good as far as where the crimping occurs.

Unless I'm completely retarded, I'm pretty sure you can't easily remove the plastic cover, crimp the wire, then put the cover back on.

You always have this ugly cracked plastic look.

I know you can wrap the wire in sleeving, then finish the end off with heat shrink, but that goes under the plastic on the terminal.

The only thing I can think of is:

1. A rubber cover like I've seen with 8awg spade terminals

These are great for 8 and 10, maybe even 12awg if you try hard enough - but anything smaller won't work on these, and I don't think I've seen speaker/remote sized spade/ring terminals with that cover. Plus it would look funny with all the extra room.

2. Crimpless spade terminals (very rare, only 2 I was able to find)

Stinger Crimpless Gold Barrier Spades For Amplifier Terminals

Monster Quick Lock

These are great, but the stinger ones are only on ebay.co.uk and the monster ones are $16 for 4 - not out of my reach but still a bit pricey and I'm not even completely sure how they work as I was unable to find any pics of them being used.

3. Monster crimpless ring terminals.

I've only seen these in 8awg and up. Not to mention I would either have to cut them to fit into the spade terminal, or remove the screw completely each time, which is not something I want to do.

4. Wire boots

These come with kicker hyper flex and fit a little loose at the end, which is already bad enough. It would be worse unless you added a thicker sleeve that encases both wires, which just ads thickness to the wire's path. - I'm still up for debate on whether this is a bad thing or not.

5. Probably the most obvious suggestion - remove the plastic and just heat shrink over the crimp. This will work, but unless the wire is exactly the size of the terminal, or the crimp was evenly applied, it's going to show and look crappy.

6. Not sure on this one, but if there is any smaller rubber covers like the 8awg, this would probably work. I don't know what to search for since I don't even know what the proper name for it is.

If anyone has pics of their spade terminal amps, please post them. I'm looking for any ideas on making the inputs look good on my amp.

I had bare wires on most of the inputs, and decided to get spade terminals, heat shrink and expandable sleeving in attempt to improve the over all aesthetics, but even though I just decided to upgrade, I realize that I want to do the best job I can so I can be proud of my work.

BTW here is what I would be dealing with.

Ignore the red circled and arrows. Those were to point out the damage on the amp.

In the first pic, you can see my attempt to make the wire look better with wire boots and heat shrink over spade terminals

[Azagtoth502]

I like those crimpless ones you showed, if you can get some Toolmaker inputs, damn things are sexy.