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Hello,
I have decent tube gear with DAC, line and phono pre etc. Every year Christmas break has been the time for me to clean the connections, spray with contact cleaner the tube pins and plugs, open the boxes and clean inside with compressed air etc but this year I am lazy.
I am wondering if it is better actually not to touch the IC's and plugs perhaps as they might be better "bonded" over the time -for better or worse. Perhaps tight connections do not need cleaning anyway, maybe it is detrimental...
What would you say?
Thank you very much for reading and Best Season's Greetings.,
Zuheyr
Follow Ups:
I thank you each and every one of you so very much for your time, for sharing your opinion, and for your suggestions.
Each time I ask something here I feel really privileged and proud to have the chance to have you around.
I did do the cleaning after all.
Cleaning was not the most through one, without opening the cases and cleaning with canned compressed air.
The silver RCA's were really tarnished, I cleaned them with silver polish and then treat them with CRC contact cleaner (I am in Europe, Belgium). I cleaned all the plugs with metal polish.
Well, I can swear I can hear the difference.And it definitely looks smarter and tubes gleam brighter :)
I had posted the same question also on the Genereal Asylum and got the answer I include the link to among others though, a bit too late:
Thank you all so very much once again.
Season's Greetings!
Kindest regards, Zuheyr
You did the right thing. Clean always sounds better than dirty. Not everyone agrees, but I highly recommend Walker Extreme SST contact enhancer (used sparingly) for all easily cleanable contacts. Clean and reapply every year. The biggest bang for the buck tweak I have tried.
I skipped my annual holiday season cleaning last year.
It wasn't long thereafter I would get noisy tubes and would do the quick fix of removing and plugging back in. This would last about a month before I had to repeat the procedure.
Sometimes it was a pre-amp tube and/or a power amp tube.
This holiday season I'm going back to cleaning.
While I'm at it I also do all the pots, switches, cables, posts... even the power cord connections.
I guess as of this moment in time the cleaning really won't prove anything unless the symptoms desist over the next 12 months.
I guess we'll see.
Note in my case my cleaning materials do come away with some evidence of grime. So my situation may vary from others depending on equipment brands and age.
Jonesy
"I know just enough to get into trouble. But not enough to get out of it."
Here's the deal - unless the the contacts you're cleaning are accumulating some oxidation, there's not much point in cleaning them. It's probably not a terrible idea to unplug, clean, and re-connect RCA jacks and other interconnects from time to time - especially if the two mating surfaces are dissimilar metals. Gold on gold, silver on silver, etc. are much more stable than when you have different metals touching.
As to ICs, other than a light dusting, you're asking for trouble. The pins are easily damaged when re-seating them, and ICs are also static sensitive.
Motto to lower BP... "Let sleeping dogs lie."
8^)
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