Cheap and effective tweak

[Guidof]

Last Summer we moved (from the Washington DC suburbs to the San Francisco Bay Area) into a house with a much smaller and oddly shaped music room. It took me about 6 months to optimize my system to this room, and in the process was again reminded of the effectiveness of a most inexpensive tweak: cleaning all contacts of interconnects and speaker wires as well as the pins of my amp's tubes.

 

I used Deoxit D 100L, sparingly applied. PITA? Yes, but the result is enhanced clarity and effortless presentation of musical information. Worth trying in your system. And if it does nothing for you, you're only out of $12.75.

 

Regards,

 

Guido F.

[wkhanna]

+1

[4est]

Now that your stuff is clean, use some Stabilant 22.

[freesteve]

Informative... Thank you... enjoy

[accwai]

I used Deoxit D 100L, sparingly applied. PITA? Yes, but the result is enhanced clarity and effortless presentation of musical information.

 

One interesting experiment is to apply DeoxIT to one channel of the system only and listen. Did that when I first tried Deoxit a few years back. The sound became very lopsided towards the side that was cleaned. Cleaning the other side restored the balance. So yes, it does work.

 

However, I read somewhere that DeoxIT D needs to be followed immediately by DeoxIT G. D is a heavy duty cleaner and G is a preserver, keeping the metal surface in a clean state for a long time. G also stops the action of D, preventing it from eating deeper and deeper into the metal. And G is also a light duty cleaner by itself. So supposedly once the system has been cleaned by DeoxIT D, you can just keep using DeoxIT G afterwards.

[Teresa]

I use XLO's TPC (The Perfect Connection) which is 99 cents a packet. One packet is enough to clean/treat all my connections.

[Snowmonkey]

While you're at it, check with your doctor and see if your ears need syringing. Most effective tweak of all.

[robbbby]

I recently picked up the deoxit audio/video survival kit, I guess I should put it to use.

[PewterTA]

I've gotten to the point that whenever I swap cables I put a drop or two on the connections with the brush just to and I have to say I think it's made a nice improvement that doesn't cost much (and yes is a pain to do)...but I feel it does help make a better connection over all.

 

I use the Deoxit Gold G100L.

[baddog]

Also delightful and sure to have one's significant other scurrying from the room is to play this prior to any serious music listening session, "Ayre’s Irrational, But Efficacious! glide-tone disc".