Dielectric grease on connection ends

Hi eddy,

I deleted my earlier post and unintentionally left your’s hanging because I called Ralph (atmasphere) Al (almarg) and couldn’t fix it by the time I noticed. They both hold the highest level of respect with me so I hope neither took umbrage at my error.

At the recommendation of a friend, I tried the Silclear silver-impregnated grease (similar to the Walker Audio product) on the male metal terminations of my power cords, ICs, and speaker cables. Messiest darn stuff I ever fooled with.

After about six months, I started having intermittent shutdowns of my preamp’s power supply and found that jiggling the IEC of the power cord "fixed" it momentarily, but then it would happen again every week or so until finally no amount of jiggling would restore AC. I removed the power cord and found a nasty sticky grungy paste all over the male plug prongs of the power supply as well as the recesses in the female IEC. Removed it with DeOxit (no easy task, that crap spread everywhere) and not only did the problem immediately disappear, but the sound of my system improved audibly. I then cleaned all of the connections thoroughly with DeOxit and then a light coat of Deoxit Gold to prevent oxidation of the exposed copper/gold/etc. My system sounded so much better immediately upon powering it back up.

Trust me, just clean those connectors good with DeOxit and then a very light application of DeOxit Gold and leave the grease in the garage.

Best to you eddy,
Dave

Thanks for the nice words, Dave. There’s certainly no reason for me to take umbrage, as I would consider it to be a great compliment to be mistaken for a designer of highly regarded audio electronics such as Ralph. And perhaps the mixup was contributed to by the fact that he and I usually agree about things in threads here, and often provide thoughts here that are similar.

BTW, for many years I too have used DeoxIT Gold (formerly known as Caig ProGold which Randy referred to above), and have been very pleased with it.

Best regards,
-- Al

A basic definition of dielectric is insulator. That in itself tells you that the type of electrical connection where it is used would not be anything related to audio gear.

If you really want to try grease on your connections, you're probably better off using conductive grease instead. 

You mean like Silclear silver-impregnated grease?

Dave