Rush, first of all, it's exciting to know that you have reaped these types of benefits from this material!
In an ironic twist, it is fitting for Lloyd to be making this stuff. The Philadelphia area is home to three of the four companies who manufacture thick film electronic materials in the world (ElectroScience Laboratories, EMCA Remex, and Herraeus Cermalloy). The fourth, DuPont, now located in Research Triangle, NC used to be here. Most of the technology was developed by TRW, which was located in Center City Philadelphia up until the 1960s.
I used to be employed in this industry, as an R&D chemist - material scientist. It was tremendously fun and rewarding, if not a great field for me financially. I personally met up with a pair of guys who came from Limerick, near Lloyd in Audobon, who I wonder about maybe having a hand in this. It's definitely a black art, and those of us who understand are tremendously rare. I know that Lloyd is a talented, creative individual, but one just doesn't happen to get into this field, it requires ridiculously specialized equipment, which has little use outside of this sphere. Getting something right the first (or, even 4th) time, is unheard of.
I have a theory on why the improvements are so drastic. Whenever I tested a thick film resistor, I printed it on a variety of test conductors, such as silver, palladium/silver, platinum/silver, gold, etc. Invariably, the resistance of each would be drastically different from another. It was quite shocking, to be truthful. Gold was always the worst, and by a long shot, as compared to the silver bearing materials.
The lower resistance one got, from the highest concentration of silver of course, the closer one came to the true properties of the resistor - little influence from the conductor. In technojargon, this is called getting an "ohmic contact". The contact resistance of gold and/or copper is several orders of magnitude higher than silver, and the results can be heard.
I feel the SST is providing a tremendous boost in getting closer to an ohmic contact in audio components. This is quite audible as you have pointed out, and as I have experienced, easily measured.
On the cautionary sides, silver, oxidizes, but slowly(being one of the eight precious metals). Over time, the benefits of this ohmic contact will dissipate as the silver becomes silver oxide. Though silver oxide is still a fairly good conductor.
To be truthful, 45%silver/55% palladium, would be my choice for the long run, it probably has the finest stability of any electronic contact, and has proven the "gold" standard since WWII. The immediate effects, however, would not be as dramatic as silver, as it is not quite as conductive. Also, the price would be A LOT higher. Back when I used to buy, silver was $4/troy ounce, palladium started at $300, and got to be $1000/troy ounce.
Also, again, having made the stuff, there are precious few organic materials which do not break down over time. Most of these things that reside in the oxygen of our environment DO break down (typical recommendations to "real" users - GM, Ford, Fujitsu Asahi, NGK, Siemens was 1 - 2 years, depending on product. I can say you can comfortably double or triple this in most cases). Obviously, storing them in a nitrogen or reducing (5% hydrogen/95% nitrogen) is not an option, but be mindful of the myriad chemical reactions that I have personally witnessed(cross linking, "drying" - not what it sounds like, breakdown of the polymer chain, etc.) in these materials. I did quite a lot of research into prolonging shelf life(I think work that was beyond what anyone else in the industry conducted), and can say that the materials that fared the best were not in use in these applications - I'm sure that has yet to change.
A good recommendation is to keep the stuff in the freezer, if possible. And, ALWAYS, run around the gap where the jar meets the lid a few times with any kind of electrical tape.
