Leaking Shower Fixture

I just finished installing a new shower fixture/assembly with threaded female connectors. After putting it together once, I had small leaks at the threaded connections (using Teflon tape). No leaks in the sweated connections.

So I took it apart (not sure why there are threaded connections since they don't seem to make anything easier!), and put it back together, this time with teflon pipe dope. Only leaks on one side now at the threaded connection.

I am pretty fed up with the whole thing. The fixture I installed in my other bathroom was threaded male with the option to sweat, so I just sweated the whole thing instead of using the threaded connections.

Does this sound like over-thightening? I am tempted to go out and buy a female threaded fixture so I can just get rid of the threaded connections.

FYI, I sweated male adapters to a few inches of copper pipe and screwed them in to the fixture first before sweating the whole thing to the water supply lines.

Thanks for any advice/tips.

The fixture looks similar to the one in this post:
https://terrylove.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6867

Tom

You can tighten the Male Adapters pretty tightly.

If you have tape and dope, you can wrap a few wraps of tape and then daub some dope over that.

Most of the time, I just use the Teflon Pipe Dope.
I snug them pretty good.

That did it (for now)! Thanks!

Tom