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RE: Not quite....

Posted by bcowen on September 25, 2016 at 09:47:53:
All this discussion on the Maestro piqued my curiosity, so with outlet in hand I paid a visit to my neighbor down the street. I knew he was an engineer for an electrical component manufacturer and worked specifically on switches and outlets. Turns out he works for Pass and Seymour. I handed him the Maestro and asked him if there was anything special about it. He gave it a once over, then asked if I minded if he popped off the backstrap (sure). "Yup, it's a spec grade Cooper outlet," says he. Nothing wrong with it, but he thought (naturally) that P&S's comparable offering was better. :) I asked about the alloy of the contacts, and he said that he wouldn't know without the spec sheet for it but that it looked and felt (he bent the ground contacts back and forth) like pretty normal metallurgy for that grade of an outlet. Then I told him that it was cryogenically treated and had some sort of EMI/RFI shielding or absorbing substance applied to it. His comment on the cryogenic treatment was "whatever" (remember, he's an engineer), and then commented that if the EMI/RFI substance was in any way conductive, the UL listing would be void. He noted the UL logo was still intact on the backstrap, and wondered if Cooper knew this substance was being applied and the outlet subsequently being resold with their UL listing.

Then I told him the price of the outlet, and he cracked up.

So, what we have is a standard $4 outlet (probably much less than that when bought in quantity) that's given a cryogenic treatment and then has some unique mystery substance applied to it. On one hand, I don't see anything on the Cruzefirst site that is making false claims or stating anything that isn't true ("high purity" is obviously a subjective description that can't be quantified). On the other hand, the total cost of this $85 outlet must be somewhere around $5, FWIW.