Cleaning and Maintenance of Connections.....

Albertporter, I didn't even know they sold the Caig Pro Gold in a spray can! I'll have to order a can here from Parts Connection. Question, how often do you clean your connections...and what do you do for cleaning for your xlr cables?

Calgarian, Yes, Pro Gold is in spray can, I use it for speaker, XLR, and RCA. I even apply a bit on cartridge pins with a toothpick and wipe off excess with a Q Tip.

I clean about once a year or anytime I'm working on the system, such as testing something or swapping tubes.

Oh, that reminds me, I use Pro Gold on tube pins too.

In addition to DeOxit & Pro Gold, Flitz metal polish works great for power cords, copper spade lugs & binding posts.

Dill,

Agreed, I use Flitz metal polish and also their lesser known product, Polier.

I've polished out power cord prongs with Flitz and then cleaned with Caig. For unplated speaker posts such as Cardas manufacturers, there's a copper cleaning gel containing Hydrofluoric Acid that works miracles. If the post is unmounted you can drop in the solution for 15 seconds, remove and wash with water. It literally looks flawless and brilliant.

If it's mounted on speaker or amp, apply the gel with Q-Tip and then wrap paper towel around the post and spray with water. I bought one of those spray bottles at Home Depot for the job, usually used to mist house plants.

I wouldn't use any cleaner/chemicals in an outlet. These are self cleaning. Maybe unplug and plug your component once a month, just a rough guess. It depends on your climate, air leakage through the outlets etc. No cleaner is safer because you don't know if any residue will be left, or contaminant build up you may stir up that is off on the insulator part of the outlet itself. Outlet connections are self cleaning. After unplugging and replugging something back in, look at the plug and you should see a shinny line on the plugs prongs. That is the contact area, and it wiped itself down to the bare clean metal, with no contamination on the connection area. Using any cleaning chemical could leave or stir up something that can turn into a problem. I remember reading an article in Stereophile were he used a Caig cleaner on all of his IC's, and it sounded bad after ward. He had to cleaner the Caig off if memory is correct. I do use Caig myself, but mainly on switch contacts in gear itself. That is a hit or miss fix.Using a cleaner is not a sure thing.