Walker SST contact enhancer

Rushton,

Thanks for the info. As I said, I don't know anything about this stuff and am curious.

Do you believe in the Nexgen and Eichmann theory?

FWIW - I used the Mapleshade contact enhancer (similar to SST) and found that it created more problems and a bigger mess than it was worth. After plugging and unplugging the ICs a couple of times, the paste ended up getting everywhere as well as holding any dirt it may have come in contact with. My result was noise due to a tiny contact on one of my RCAs. Very difficult to diagnose since it kept changing as I tried to narrow it down to a single component by changing interconnects and the paste kept exchanging itself with ICs and smearing on the RCA. Only a slight film of paste was used too. It took hours to diagnose, then hours to clean-up too.

But, maybe it would be good on the breaker...where I'll never have to see it again.

Dave

Hi Dave, I think the philosophy of reducing the amount of metal in a connector has some solid theoretical foundation (as best I can understand it since I'm just a lay person), and I think the theory is being substantiated in some applications (for example, 47Labs has been doing this in their designs for years).

As to the Mapleshade Silclear, I think you'd have a different and more positive experience with the Walker Audio SST and Extreme SST. It also is highly conductive so you have to be careful with it as well, but it does not migrate (even under high heat) and it dries to a soft texture rather than remaining a paste. This makes it much more resistent to going places you would never want it to travel. Some people have noted a concern about the dried SST flaking, so again there is still room for good caution. In my system, I found the Extreme SST to make such a significant positive improvement that I consider it a necessary part of my system setup, with all the appropriate considerations for use duly noted.
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Rushton, I've applied the Extreme SST stuff to most of the IC's and power cords in my system since receiving it last week and have to agree with you. It is really startling the difference it has made. Eventually I will get around to putting on the pins of my tubes but that will take a while!

Thanks for the follow-up, Mem916. Glad to hear its making a positive difference for you. Keep in mind that the break in will be most rapid on those contacts that have a larger electrical flow (power cords and speaker cables) and will require longer on connections like phono cables and phono cartridge pins. On phono cartridge pins, allow for about 20-hours of break-in versus approx. 5-hours for speaker cables. Applying E-SST on tube pins (particularly phono stage tubes) was worth the effort here.
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I use Lloyd's SST in my system and recently Lloyd sent me a bottle of his new Extreme SST at 2x the price. I must admit that in my system there was a sonic improvement with the most noticeable at the volume which seemed much louder. All in all a good product HOWEVER when I switched to the Extreme SST I truly could not appreciate any sonic difference

Here are links to my system

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?vaslt&1049587927&read&3&4&

http://homepage.mac.com/imacdoyou86/PhotoAlbum52.html