I have found that a little attention (TLC) to the RCA type connectors on stereo systems can make a nice difference in performance and sound of the equipment just by using safe solvents on the male and female connectors and cables.
I was having a flaky channel and I did this to my living room stereo. It made a tremendous improvement on the whole system.... I guess I should watch my own videos more often. 🙂
These look like the same ones from Amazon. www.amazon.com/Utoolmart-Diameter-Stainless-Bristles-Cleaning/dp/B07X39WXH1/ref=asc_df_B07X39WXH1?tag=bngsmtphsnus-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=80676783691740&hvnetw=s&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4584276309531974&psc=1
I can provide information in support of how small things of improvement, like cleaning up the RCA male and female connectors between preamp and amplifier or DAC and preamp, etc., actually do help an audio system SOUND better. When you get anything new, everything works great. Be it an amplifier or a new car. All the connectors, interfaces between modules in an amplifier, are all new and clean. Everything flows with very little resistance. Resistance in its simplest form, dissipates heat. It resists the flow of current. Reactance both capacitive and inductive shift the phase and store energy in the capacitance as voltage and in the magnetic field as current. It is the dance of life in analog. Field engineers do not have the lab equipment to discern the anomalies in very low power, low voltage, low current where power levels are in the mW and uW levels. Completely different world from the higher current carrying parts of the amplifier which are the wires to and from amplifier and speaker. We don't want to take speaker cable to an insanity level but for some reason, my system does perform better with larger speaker wires. On the other hand, maybe if I had just taken the existing wires and crimped on new connectors and just did the whole clean up, maybe the smaller wires would sound just a good. There is an important subjective improvement in cleaning the connectors whether they are working at uW or KW level, they are all important. Years ago we believed that when a car battery was going dead we could put 1/2 pure aspirin in each cell and it would bring it back to life. It worked. I did it more than once but then I read where a fellow disputed the aspirin fix. It said it was noting more than the fact that we removed the battery, cleaned the contacts, performed complete maintenance on the CONNECTORS and everything works so much better. He called it a, "Laying On Of Hands" that healed it for a little longer life. My car battery after this treatment and aspirin could last another year. Why do we so insanely peruse long human life when it is so finite? It seems there are some interesting things about the next experience in life. I am not going to try and sell this on CNN because few will comprehend it. Death seems to be necessity dismissed in many cases, for youth. Young people don't think they are going to die. That is the way it is supposed to be. I glimpse at the complexity of life and it has a lot of wires and signals in it... we are just observers in most of it but our presence, even just observation, changes everything. I think we are the king aliens of this planet. The Shark Aliens of Earth. Have you ever considered that we may be a very successful animal because we can eat darn near anything? We had equipment at WSMR that had limit switches that run at the mW level and they would go bad - or mostly get intermittent. There is no way you are going to find anything wrong with this switch, measuring it on the workbench. But the results of poor uW level contacts causes the entire unit to fail. You have to put in another switch and hope it is not intermittent. Most were good. My cat I call Angel doesn't like my feral one name, Pebbles. Angel is like Marilu in a room of third graders and little Pebbles hasn't graduated form pre-K yet. Maybe that is what it is like to be a feral cat towards humans. I would keep an eye on those humans too.
I have a question if you think this is possible I have a 1960s HHscott 222c tube amp with a 5AR4 rectifier, My question is I would like to use my type 83 mercury rectifier if I get a pin adapter do you think it would work just for testing I also have a b+ voltage meter on the amp and I use a 10amp vintage variable voltage transformer so the voltage doesn’t get to high My output vac in the mains is 123vac I have mine set to 115vac before my output tubes would red plate I just would like to use the tube I spent some good money for it it was a nos Navy military made tube I already warmed it up using just the heaters so the mercury wouldn’t arc and it works good on my power supply I made as a test model I’m not new as in working on amplifiers I just like to experiment with different tubes I see you like to as well I enjoy everything you make thank you 🙏
I like to play with most any tube and I do like MV rectifiers. The 5AR4 has a 5V, 2A filament (some say 1.9A) and the 83 has a 5V, 3A filament so it will stress the filament winding if it is only designed for 2A. It will also raise the plate voltage because drop across a MV rectifier is lower and constant. The datasheet says the 83 needs 15 seconds before a load is placed on it to come up to temperature. I don't think it would hurt to try it but you probably shouldn't leave it that way. Those are my thoughts on it. Stay safe...
U can also find 99 percent alcohol from labs online u can also buy any chemicals to be honest these days thanks I never cleaned my jacks I might just wire brush it and use detox
Jim, I have never gone thru this cleaning procedure before but, as much as I don't want to believe it, my big system sounds better with the large #6 wire to the speakers. I am not going to tell you I can measure the improvement but it sure seems to "sound" better. Then I got to thinking, doesn't almost all new equipment sound good? Is it because all of the switches and connectors are clean with the least amount of resistance? What if I clean everything properly - the input selector wafer switches all the way to the RCA jacks. I swear, it sounds even better. I suppose I have just lost my engineer mind and become an audiophile where everything is better just because we imagine it to be. 🙂 I used to call this lug-nut polishing, meaning, what can most of us do to our cars besides put on shiny chrome do-dats to the wheels and motors. Not many of us are going to change out a cam in an engine for actual higher horsepower performance. Not so different in audio amplifiers. We whizz thru tubes and swear this one or that one is better than the other ones. How likely are we to change an output transformer that could truly change measurable and possibly listening performance? I have made amplifiers that certainly were not 0.5% THD from 20 to 20KHz and they sounded great. If we can say a SET amplifier sounds great, it sure doesn't have to do with lower levels of THD. Technically, all the SET amplifies have a terrible amount of 2nd order harmonic distortion compared to a high-end push pull amplifier but we can fall in love with the SET. Obviously, we like the artifacts the power amplifier adds to the music - to a point... Just thinking.
It’s always good practice to clean everything I honestly clean everything with mineral spirits with a brush after a good vacuum and use my carb kit brushes like you did This is a thing to note I’m sure you already know that Russian and china tubes have smaller pins and sometimes have problems in worn American sockets I had a few issues in the past I try not to use Russian tubes in my personal gear but I will sub them out when I sell I’m on a roll I’m on my 3rd amplifier build now Using old utc small power transformers to run a couple fender champ circuits one will be a single 6v6 and the other a 807 what output trans would you consider using for a single ended class A 807 for guitar use at 400vdc at the plate I’m figuring 5k cause that’s all I got lol
