loose tubes

I have used the type of sand paper that is made of (mounted on) cloth (can't think of the name of it and it's used for polishing) with good results. It has gotten rid of the start up "rustle" on some old signal tubes. I am leary of using it on plated pins though as I went through the gold on one once. I lost my sheet so have to replace it to clean up a couple batches of NOS tubes that I have since received. I now use Kontak on all the tube sockets and pins and the grunge that it lifts (that alcohal did not get rid of) is visible as the results are audible. This is the first place that I tried it out and the improvement motivated me to clean the rest of the connections in the system.

Greg, I think that it was C. G. Jung himself, who maintained, that although all humans must suffer, it was the neurotic who suffered about things "unreal". So you see, we are NOT neurotic, because our sufferings (expensive gear, reproachfull wives, bust budgets, scratchy LPs, snipers on ebay, when you've found that rare CC803 Telefunken for five bucks the pair, the list is endless) are REAL enough. We may be nuts, but that is fine, neurotic we are defenitely not.
Cheerio

No sheet, huh, Dekay?
It's called emery cloth or the finer grit is crocus cloth.
Nh Fi, Michael Percy has the fancy tube sockets, www.bainbridge.net/percyaudio

Actually, come to think of it, I think I prefer loose women to loose tubes and with those you'd hardly need sandpaper and sometimes not even sheets and here you certainly will notice the difference. Does that make me a bad audiophile?!!!

Kitch, what kind of "fancy" sockets. I'm running too slow now to download the catalog.