Tim I'd be very hesitant to use any oily substances on contacting surfaces. Even Caig pro-gold contains an oil which is supposed to prevent contact oxidation, but what sonic signature might this impart?
Under the hood of a car you'll find electrical contacts are wiped with silicon such as SilGlyde, and in that environment it makes sense to do that, but not with audio connections IMO.
Any oil or lubricant will attract & hold dust into the connection, causing importation of dirt into your connectors & even somewhat into the equipment itself. Solvents or lubricants might even cause material degradation, which is why Accuphase advises against using any cleaning solvents within their products & instead provides equipment with dust caps on all connectors. I still clean my cables & even the exterior surfaces of equipment contacts with an oil free solvent such as Kontact or Ultraconnect, but I never use anything containing oils or lubricants. |
Hi Tim! I'd like to add my .02 to Bob's remarks. For the
past 12+ years I've owned a video editing and media duplication company in Portland, OR. The equipment in my
studio requires hundreds of electrical, audio, video, and
data connections; and I would NEVER use any sort of oily
substance on any of my connections. The best connections
are the ones that provide the best metal-to-metal contact;
and I fail to understand how using any sort of oil-based
substance is going to "improve" anything.
Sounds like these folks are selling audio "snake oil" if
you ask me. And as Bob has already mentioned; if you use
this stuff you will have lots of work (not to mention possible connection problems) getting the oil off. |
There is a product called oxgard which is used for pigtailing aluminum wire in homes. Essentially, all it does is to keep the different metals being copper and aluminum from reacting to one another. The different metals would cause the other to oxidize thus increasing resistance and in some cases cause house fires. However, in modern homes using all copper wire this isn't an issue. Furthermore, connectors in hi end audio equipment use either gold or nickle plated connectors although they a susceptible to air born cotaminents they are not susceptible to oxidation. |
I really wonder why this company suggests using cable spunk on cables?? seems unusual. |
First you have to kill a chicken......Why would anyone want to put dielectric grease on electrical connectors other than to tame a problem in the design as it will roll off the highs? |
best bet is rubbing alchohol, also the best to use to clean all electonics! |
Anyone ever try that "HIGHLY CONDUCTIVE" silver based grease that J Scull wrote up in a few months back in his "Fine Tunes" column ? While i would not use it on audio connections, it may have its' uses elsewhere and was just curious about other's thoughts and experiences with it. Sean
> |
Sean I think you're referring to ConductoLube, a silver impregnated type of grease. I've used it successfully on large industrial DC battery wet cell systems; the connections between cells are made with open frame lead plated buss bar.
Cheech - rubbing alcohol is not even close to being the best contact cleaner; it contains lanolin, a contaminating oil, which as stated above is not desirable for our audio applications. |
Bob , with rubbing alcohol, it is the ideal cleaner for your audio components, ( faceplates, cases , audio racks, cables ,ect. i recommended this to all my customers and they seemed to agree. the oil content is so minute , you will never know it there. as for contacts it cleans perfectly, helping to prevent oxidation, commonlly found in the jacks and back of unit conectors, Rubbing alcohol never held any dust , nor attracts it. what's wrong maybe it too cheap? ever thought what is in "Kontact or Ultraconnect"
I advise people in this thread to try it with a white terry towel ( wash rag ) and tell me what you think. Bob you may have some knowlege in industrial aplication in the mater, but I have knowlege in both. In mater of fact Levinson and a few others recommend this and uses it themselves! call Sara Reed of madrigal. |
How about using silver grease for outlets? Would it be OK? |
The latest generation of Ultraconnect polluted my system!!! Took a long time to remove any trace of it. Audioquest made a running change in the original formula at the request of a certain angency. |
I'd heard that thay made a change in formulation of Ultraconnect but fortunately I have the old version; thanks for the report tweak. When I run out I'll stick with Kontact.
How did you get it off? Pure Denatured alcohol (without the lanolin, water, & other misc. contaminants of isopropyl junk) might be a good approach. I'll bet you were really scratching your head when you cleaned all the connections & got worse sound! What happened - what sonic signature occurred that you didn't want? |
At that time, I thought, How did I break my system, what have I done lately to make it so non-musicial. I had in the past used the original Ultra-connect formula and really enjoyed the results. However I lost the original and bought the new. After many headaches, I called the manufacturer and was told the formula was changed! The sound of my system had become grainy, the mids and highs were jangeling and had lost their coherence. Yes Bob, I did try the denatured alcohol though I don't remember that to be the cure. I had read about TPC sold by XLO,, got it tried it,and cured it. Music was back in my system. There maybe a better solution out there, but I will be most reluctant to switch. Tom |
What's strange about that scenario Tom is that Ultraconnect etc. is supposed to *remove* all of the crusty stuff, leaving nothing behind. It seems that because the solvent did impart a sonic signature of its own, that in fact the solvent did leave some detrimental residue behind. It's NOT suppposed to do that of course.
Lucky for me I have 2 new full bottles of their original formula + the remainder of my original bottle. But I'll keep XLO's TPC in mind for the future in case I decide to try that vs. the highly recommended Kontact. |
I'm quite ignorant about all this, but didn't Theta recommend some kind of goop for AT&T glass connections? |
Unsound, yes they did, and I still have some. In the case of fiber optics, this was a light conductive substance designed to improve the light transmission of the connection.
Idea being similar at first glance, but electrically very different. |
Alberporter, was there concern that this goop would attract dust or other undesirable substances that would deteriorate the cable, connections or otherwise interfere with transmission? Did it require special periodic cleansing? What happened to this type of transmission? Seemed like there was a lot of noise (sorry) about it a while back. It was a fairly expensive option at the time. Just curious. |
At the time I was only interested in making my Theta, Wadia combo sound better and didn't think about potential problems. There were no symptoms of cable or connector deterioration during the year or so that I owned it. However, that is probably too short a test to be definitive.
As for cleaning, the connector did sound better with the goop on than off, so once we removed it the second round of testing it remained on the connection until sold.
I have since come to the conclusion that hard wire is the way to go. There are so many good digital links now, I would not worry about this old technology. |
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anyone ever tried CRC electrical contact solution? |
