Walker SST contact enhancer

Than what's up with the Eichmann plugs and the new WTB RCA's. They go for a very small contact area.

BTW - I am not being antagonistic. I know nothing about this stuff and am curious.

Dave

Dave, as I understand the theory behind the Eichmann plugs and the new WTB RCAs, it's about reducing the amount of metal (and dielectric) in the connection more than reducing the contact area per se. There's a discussion of the design philosophy in a an article in Issue 71 of UHF Magazine.

I haven't looked at your link yet, but how does that differ from what is being done by people using this stuff at the breaker box?

Is it because a lot of current can be asked for at the power connections whereas that is not the case for signal wires (spcifically ICs)?

I'm sorry, Dave. Your question lost me. The point of the small contact on the Eichmann and new WBT plugs is to reduce the amount of metal in the connectors, not simply reduce the surface area of the point of contact. It's the mass of metal they're trying to reduce, not the surface area per se.

As to using a contact enhancer, anytime there is a connection point, the electrical current has to make a jump across a physical junction: there will always be some amount of resistance and some amount of interference. Lloyd Walker talks about this from his experience with fine tuning control systems in nuclear power plants and chemical plants: wherever there is a connection, you can see on a scope the spike of spurious energy created at that junction point. That spurious energy is going somewhere, often as some form of distortion feedback back into the system. The contact enhancer will help reduce that, whether at the low signal level of an interconnect, or the higher power level of a circuit breaker in your junction box. From an article about Lloyd by Srajan Ebaen published at EnjoyTheMusic.com:

"One of his standard test procedures of the day involved the use of time domain reflectometers to test the integrity of critical wiring, say to the core of a nuclear reactor. Despite super-expensive connectors in the $1-3K per range that make our audiophile WBT jewelry look like candy box treats, Walker recalls that each such juncture and connection still caused very obvious signal spikes and noise reflections on his test gear. This constituted but one of many hands-on insights that would later find expression in his audio design work even though not all phenomena in the industrial arena translate directly into ours." http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/earwax/1201/

Rushton,

Thanks for the info. As I said, I don't know anything about this stuff and am curious.

Do you believe in the Nexgen and Eichmann theory?

FWIW - I used the Mapleshade contact enhancer (similar to SST) and found that it created more problems and a bigger mess than it was worth. After plugging and unplugging the ICs a couple of times, the paste ended up getting everywhere as well as holding any dirt it may have come in contact with. My result was noise due to a tiny contact on one of my RCAs. Very difficult to diagnose since it kept changing as I tried to narrow it down to a single component by changing interconnects and the paste kept exchanging itself with ICs and smearing on the RCA. Only a slight film of paste was used too. It took hours to diagnose, then hours to clean-up too.

But, maybe it would be good on the breaker...where I'll never have to see it again.

Dave