It is best to use a cleaner designed for cleaning contacts and connections. Many people believe alcohol is a solvent and cleaner, it is not. In the printing industry alcohol is widely used in the water to make it wetter and to produce a cleaner print. If you put ink in a cup of alcohol and in a cup of water, the ink in the cup of water will break down while the ink in the cup of alcohol will be untouched. Ink is an oil based product more like grease and alcohol has no effect on it. So using it on your connections you are not getting them as clean as they should be.
My overlooked cheap tweak
I was lubricating the gears on my transport last night, and after reassembling it, decided to clean the digital cable and the jacks. There was a lot of junk on the Q-tips I used. After the cleaning, there was a really big improvement in sound. It wasn't the transport lube that did it, as it was just the gears that open and close the drawer, not the CD playing mechanism.
I used to do this regularly, but hadn't done it in +/- five mos. I don't know about the rest of you, but I could do my system maintenance a bit more often. Of course I've bought a new PC or two in the last 5 mos at a few hundred a pop. This two Q-tip tweak was right up there with the new PC's. It was the best 10 cent tweak I've had in a long while. Hope this reminds someone out there.
If you haven't cleaned your IC's and jacks before, and don't want to invest too much, you can use isoprpyl alcohol and Q-tips with most of the cotton pulled off. Rub in and outside the RCA jacks and the IC's. Wait until they dry before plugging them back in.
I used to do this regularly, but hadn't done it in +/- five mos. I don't know about the rest of you, but I could do my system maintenance a bit more often. Of course I've bought a new PC or two in the last 5 mos at a few hundred a pop. This two Q-tip tweak was right up there with the new PC's. It was the best 10 cent tweak I've had in a long while. Hope this reminds someone out there.
If you haven't cleaned your IC's and jacks before, and don't want to invest too much, you can use isoprpyl alcohol and Q-tips with most of the cotton pulled off. Rub in and outside the RCA jacks and the IC's. Wait until they dry before plugging them back in.
- ...
- 18 posts total
- 18 posts total