The best way to clean RCA contacts and tube pins in your experience.

treitz3

Super Moderator
Staff member
Dec 25, 2011
5,459
961
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The tube lair in beautiful Rock Hill, SC
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen of the forum. I have Caig Deoxit and I have been using that for years but I'm looking for a more professional cleaning process than just spraying on the Deoxit and wiping with a Q-tip or just letting it dry. My system gets a regular treatment yearly and the results are fine, I'm just wondering what other folks may do to achieve even greater results. I'd like to raise the bar to my cleaning ritual, hopefully some folks here can chime in on techniques or tools they use to achieve the best in cleaning and preserving these vital yet often overlooked parts.

Through a little bit of research, I have found a tool made by Signet that is a specifically designed RCA cleaning tool. It looks to be just a simple piece of plastic that may or may not work. There was one other tool I saw that looked like a mini pipe cleaner I have that also looks like it may or may not work. I'd like to know what tools you use, especially if you feel that you have used something better. Even if it is a home made tool.

One thing I will be ordering will be non shorting RCA caps for all of the unused RCA inputs and outputs throughout the rig. I truly have no idea whether these will work or not to lower the noise floor and if they do work for that, I will consider it an added bonus. I did see a video on the Cardas website that showed the results on an oscilloscope but I realize my listening room is quite different than the area surrounding that oscilloscope. My main reason for getting them is to help protect the unused inputs and outputs from oxidation and exposure to the indoor elements [however minimal].

I see that Cardas has solutions, Kontak has solutions, MAAS has an interesting product and the electrical field has a multitude of products that all claim to have one advantage or another over their competition. When cleaning these aforementioned contact points, what have you found to be the most effective product?

Last on the list is tools you use to clean the pins on the tubes. Currently I use mini pipe cleaners, Deoxit and I sometimes will break out the Dremel tool and a small buffing wheel to gently clean the pins. Has anybody else found something better to use?

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I will appreciate any and all comments to help better my cleaning tool arsenal, solutions or techniques to help achieve the best sound out of the gear sitting before me.
 

fas42

Addicted To Best
Jan 8, 2011
3,973
3
0
NSW Australia
Thanks for bringing up the topic, and I might use this as an opportunity to mention a few conclusions I've come to over the years, if I may ...

First of all, the best contact solution is to eliminate all connections which rely on physical mating of two metal surfaces. Many years ago I went through the exercise of of trying all the highly rated contact treatments, over and over again, in many ways and methods, and they all ended up still being points of "weakness" in the system. How could I tell this? By the fact that the contact point, no matter how carefully it was treated, always started to deteriorate in a very short time frame; I could literally hear the distortion start to creep in as the connection began to lose its integrity. And the only way I could eliminate this was by hardwiring the actual connection: soldering or possibly crimping, something that guarantees a gas tight connection over a period of time. So called "bad" recordings are excellent for pinpointing deficiencies in this area: anything that is marginal to listen to will become considerably worse in quality when poor connections are part of the system.

If I'm forced to use a physical connection then the only thing I'm happy with is the following: I rigorously clean the metal surfaces with methylated spirits and cotton buds up to 3 times: wet, dry, wet, dry, wet, dry. Then I get a silver contact treatment, just the cheap electrical parts version is fine, and use just enough to finely coat the surfaces that will mate, and connect. Then, most important of all, I do not disturb that connection!!! If, for any reason, that contact point is disturbed, jiggled, whatever, then game's over: I pull the connectors apart, and treat them as contaminated, go through the whole cleaning, etc, process again. That's the only way I've got connections to do the job over a decent time period ...

As far as RCA connectors go, you're dealing with junk straight off the mark. Best solution is to completely eliminate them using whatever method you see as feasible. The worst offenders are the sockets, the way they are typically made is terrible, only a few are of a reasonable quality. So if you're after the best out of your system you'll be fighting uphill making these do the job correctly unless you're lucky ...

Frank
 

MylesBAstor

Well-Known Member
Apr 20, 2010
11,236
81
1,725
New York City
Thanks for bringing up the topic, and I might use this as an opportunity to mention a few conclusions I've come to over the years, if I may ...

First of all, the best contact solution is to eliminate all connections which rely on physical mating of two metal surfaces. Many years ago I went through the exercise of of trying all the highly rated contact treatments, over and over again, in many ways and methods, and they all ended up still being points of "weakness" in the system. How could I tell this? By the fact that the contact point, no matter how carefully it was treated, always started to deteriorate in a very short time frame; I could literally hear the distortion start to creep in as the connection began to lose its integrity. And the only way I could eliminate this was by hardwiring the actual connection: soldering or possibly crimping, something that guarantees a gas tight connection over a period of time. So called "bad" recordings are excellent for pinpointing deficiencies in this area: anything that is marginal to listen to will become considerably worse in quality when poor connections are part of the system.

If I'm forced to use a physical connection then the only thing I'm happy with is the following: I rigorously clean the metal surfaces with methylated spirits and cotton buds up to 3 times: wet, dry, wet, dry, wet, dry. Then I get a silver contact treatment, just the cheap electrical parts version is fine, and use just enough to finely coat the surfaces that will mate, and connect. Then, most important of all, I do not disturb that connection!!! If, for any reason, that contact point is disturbed, jiggled, whatever, then game's over: I pull the connectors apart, and treat them as contaminated, go through the whole cleaning, etc, process again. That's the only way I've got connections to do the job over a decent time period ...

As far as RCA connectors go, you're dealing with junk straight off the mark. Best solution is to completely eliminate them using whatever method you see as feasible. The worst offenders are the sockets, the way they are typically made is terrible, only a few are of a reasonable quality. So if you're after the best out of your system you'll be fighting uphill making these do the job correctly unless you're lucky ...

Frank

Coat tube pins at your own risk.
 

MylesBAstor

Well-Known Member
Apr 20, 2010
11,236
81
1,725
New York City
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen of the forum. I have Caig Deoxit and I have been using that for years but I'm looking for a more professional cleaning process than just spraying on the Deoxit and wiping with a Q-tip or just letting it dry. My system gets a regular treatment yearly and the results are fine, I'm just wondering what other folks may do to achieve even greater results. I'd like to raise the bar to my cleaning ritual, hopefully some folks here can chime in on techniques or tools they use to achieve the best in cleaning and preserving these vital yet often overlooked parts.

Through a little bit of research, I have found a tool made by Signet that is a specifically designed RCA cleaning tool. It looks to be just a simple piece of plastic that may or may not work. There was one other tool I saw that looked like a mini pipe cleaner I have that also looks like it may or may not work. I'd like to know what tools you use, especially if you feel that you have used something better. Even if it is a home made tool.

One thing I will be ordering will be non shorting RCA caps for all of the unused RCA inputs and outputs throughout the rig. I truly have no idea whether these will work or not to lower the noise floor and if they do work for that, I will consider it an added bonus. I did see a video on the Cardas website that showed the results on an oscilloscope but I realize my listening room is quite different than the area surrounding that oscilloscope. My main reason for getting them is to help protect the unused inputs and outputs from oxidation and exposure to the indoor elements [however minimal].

I see that Cardas has solutions, Kontak has solutions, MAAS has an interesting product and the electrical field has a multitude of products that all claim to have one advantage or another over their competition. When cleaning these aforementioned contact points, what have you found to be the most effective product?

Last on the list is tools you use to clean the pins on the tubes. Currently I use mini pipe cleaners, Deoxit and I sometimes will break out the Dremel tool and a small buffing wheel to gently clean the pins. Has anybody else found something better to use?

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I will appreciate any and all comments to help better my cleaning tool arsenal, solutions or techniques to help achieve the best sound out of the gear sitting before me.

What I do for all connections, tube pins included, is first clean the connection with Gorham solid silver cleaner (haven't tried it but Flitz might also work just as well) and a Q-tip/pipe cleaner. Then I thoroughly clean the tube pins with some type of purified water followed by a good cleaning with Kontak. It's amazing how much crap that gets off the tube and how much better it is.

Andy Baumann at VTS does some sort of descaling process that he won't talk about on the tubes that he sells. Might just be the De-Oxit.

I never treat tube pins because the risk vs reward isn't there. Too many stories of people putting too much of a Ag contact enhancer and it causing the amp for example to blow up. So I try and move my tubes every month and clean them every two months or so.

Same goes esp. for the AC cords too. Almost every time I hear a loss of transparency or a touch of hardness creeping into the system, it turns out to be a dirty AC contact.
 

treitz3

Super Moderator
Staff member
Dec 25, 2011
5,459
961
1,290
The tube lair in beautiful Rock Hill, SC
AC contact is another area I'm currently looking into and addressing. Please allow me to ask a question that may be commonly known but which I do not know the answer too. The Caig Deoxit I have preserves the tube contacts. Is that considered an "enhancement" product? It's Caig pro gold.

No issues since its initial use years ago. Talk to me.
 

NorthStar

Member
Feb 8, 2011
24,305
1,323
435
Vancouver Island, B.C. Canada
AC contact is another area I'm currently looking into and addressing. Please allow me to ask a question that may be commonly known but which I do not know the answer too. The Caig Deoxit I have preserves the tube contacts. Is that considered an "enhancement" product? It's Caig pro gold.

No issues since its initial use years ago. Talk to me.

I'd say it is a "maintenance" good custom preservation, longetivity, and good sounding habit. :b
 

treitz3

Super Moderator
Staff member
Dec 25, 2011
5,459
961
1,290
The tube lair in beautiful Rock Hill, SC

treitz3

Super Moderator
Staff member
Dec 25, 2011
5,459
961
1,290
The tube lair in beautiful Rock Hill, SC

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