New Tweak --- Its Fantastic


THE NEW TWEAK

Over the good part of this past year I’ve been beta testing a new tweak, the name of which is "Total Contact." Its a hi-bred graphene contact enhancer that is different from all other contact enhancers that have come and gone for one reason or another. I’m not new to these contact enhancers, having had quite a bit of experience with a product developed by the late Brian Kyle and his "Quick Silver" contact enhancer. The "Total Contact" is different ... a LOT different.

"Total Contact" is graphene based and is not a vibration control. It eliminates micro-arching between two contacts. Micro-arching, much like Micro-vibration smears the sound in our stereo systems. Its the type of distortion that we don’t know is there .... until we eliminate it. There is no break-in as we know it. The sound is improved right off the bat, but what you hear is only a smidgen of what’s to come.

I tested three generations of "TC," each of which was an improvement over the previous incarnation. The final mix was cryogenitically treated and made for a more effective, much smoother application. It comes in a large hypodermic needle type plunger containing 1.5 ml of product and includes a instructional DVD and an application brush.

The application should be applied with a very thin coat to all of your electrical connections .... from your cartridge pins to your power cords. I did my entire system, including the ends of my fuses.

Upon initial application, you will notice an improvement in clarity, correctness of tonal balance and a more overall organic sound. But ... that is just scratching the surface of what this magic paste does. As it cures, the improvements become more apparent. Much more!

There are two real break-through events that happen almost to the day with "Total Contact," one at four weeks and another at eight weeks . At four weeks, you’ll get a real jump in clarity and overall improvement. That’s only a taste though of what’s to come at eight weeks. At eight weeks your system’s focus will make a jump in SQ that is so real - its surreal.

After 40 years in the hobby, and a total tweak nut, I have never heard anything that does what this graphene paste does. The see-through clarity at eight weeks becomes simply amazing. The "paste" eventually cures into a kind of polymer plastic and it seems that the sound improves with each listening session. So, its important that you leave your contacts alone for the duration. If you’re the type of person that continually switches wires in and out, you’ll have to re paste until enough time has elapsed to get "the cure."

The only problem I had was with the first batch and that had to do with shorting out a tube pin in the line stage. Use the "TC" very sparingly on tube pins, if at all. I only had problems with the line stage tube pins. The Amp, CD Player and Phono Stage has had no tube pin problems at all.

Tim Mrock, one of our fellow A’goners, is the developer of the product. Its taken Tim 15 years and several patents to get it right. Tim has "pasted" every electrical contact he can find in his audio system, all of the switches in his circuit breaker box, every contact in his car ... and has used it in commercial applications such as hospital circuit breakers, surgical lights ... and other places where efficiency and long life of electrical components are deemed important.

This product is highly recommended to anyone who truly wants to get the most out of his/her audio systems. There’s enough product in each tube to do at least two audio systems as it just takes a very thin coat on each application to be effective. The last tube was enough to do my system twice and then a friend’s system this past weekend.


Frank

PS: There were a couple of other A’goner beta testers of this product as well. Hopefully, they will chime in here with their experiences for comparison. I "pasted" both of Steve Fleschler’s systems a few days ago, perhaps he will comment on his results too. We forgot to paste Steve’s power cords though, so there’s a lot more to be had from Steve’s two fantastic systems.

Frank
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Showing 13 responses by mikeg

Put this this on my Tidal Audio Impact amp, speaker cables, power cord and XLR interconnects into amp and played music 12 hours later.  This is an outstanding contact enhancer.
I added the TC to my Ayon Audio S-5 Network Player and the results are magnified.  The bass is more detailed and the soundstage is expanded further. It amazing how many details are obscured without the TC treatment and this is day one.  If you treat the breaker box, do you have to treat all breakers?  Or just the ones used for your audio? 
Day eight for most of my system was yesterday. I had to unplug the system for a day because of thunderstorms. Before plugging and turning on everything, I treated my Uptone Audio JS-2 ps dc cable and pc the umbilical cable between my Ayon Audio S-5 ps and Network Player/DAC/Preamp. Now my entire system is treated except the electrical panel. I have all SR Galileo UEF cables, Atmosphere XL4, Blackbox, ACB SE, and 40 plus HFTs. This sounds like entirely different system. This TC is exactly what my system needed to sound it’s best. I treated my other system with the OLED, TiVo, and Focal Soundbar. I definitely see better colors, and a brighter and a more resolving picture.
I did my panel in steps.  First the main breakers, then the bus bar and left side grounds, and finally the right side grounds.  Each step was a noticeable improvement in terms of noise floor reduction.  To finish my electrical panel, I have an electrician coming over to treat the mains and grounds in the panel and at the meter.  In Kansas, this requires the KCP & L to open the meter.  This has been quite the journey so far and Tim is a blast to work with.
My "panel service" was finished yesterday.  An electrician and the power company met at my house at 9am.  The power company opened the meter and we went to town disconnecting the utility service, removing the conductive grease, pasting the TC on the outside meter connections, and doing the same inside on my electrical panel.  It took about 1.5 hours.  The power company technician treated the incoming utility lines and even the meter.  I went back to work afterwards. About 5 hours later, I listened to my system and played the same 6 recordings that I'm using the evaluate the TC product.  All I can say in Tim's words is "WOW" ... lol.  The monoblock tube amps I'm using are known to have a muted transient response as compared to my $28K reference solid state amp.  I had improved it over the last five days by replacing the stock fuses with SR Blue fuses and treating all contacts on the monoblocks with TC.  When I listened last night after the panel service was complete, the last hint of transient response deficiency was gone.  The transient response of my tube monoblocks are now on par with the ss reference amp, I'm hearing much deeper into the recording, and the front to back layering is of a much higher density.  The piano which can be a difficult instrument to accurately reproduce is fleshed out before my eyes.
I had a local audiophile friend who is highly discerning when it comes to audio over on Sunday who hadn’t heard my system since applying TC. My friend has had many high end systems over the years and fine audio is his only hobby. He listened to my system and immediately shook his head and said, "You’ve made a lot changes since I was last here. What did you do to your system? You’ve always had a lower noise floor given your highly tweaked system consisting of top of the line Synergistic Research cables and tweaks but your system noise floor is much lower than I have ever heard. I’m hearing details in my favorite recordings that were obscured before and your system is better balanced and less forward sounding". With TC, my system has never sounded better. The soundstage is left to right and front to back is huge with greater image density. I’m at the 8th week mark on my cables and the 2nd week mark on my treated Cutler Hammer panel. I’m also happy to report that I’ve been able to remove some outside the signal path tweaks since treating my system with TC.  Looking forward to the new products coming on board.
I’ve provided feedback about how much further TC has taken my reviewing system is past posts but I finally took the plunge and treated the insides of my Ayon Audio S-5 Network Player/DAC/Preamp. Painted the R-core transformer center sections, center section of fuses, signal and dc power hook up wires, tops of metal caps, and DAC chips.  Try to remove the main pin connectors to treat the pins has been troublesome.  If anybody does this, I highly recommend that an illuminated magnifying glass be used to verify your work.  Will report the results on Saturday. I have eliminated all competing products including one of those mentioned by geoffkait in my reviewing system. I previously had 14 of the same competing devices in my system until recently. TC works as advertised.
My follow-up to the 6/13/18 post:  "I’ve provided feedback about how much further TC has taken my reviewing system is past posts but I finally took the plunge and treated the insides of my Ayon Audio S-5 Network Player/DAC/Preamp. I painted the R-core transformer center sections, center section of fuses, signal and dc power hook up wires, tops of metal caps, and DAC chips".  I also treated the outside surface of the internal preamp tubes and power supply tubes and the 12 unused rca  noise stopper caps.  All mods using TC were done late on Saturday afternoon.  I have another high end digital component in for review (retail is about $10K more than my S-5) that I had planned to compare to my internally TC treated Ayon Audio S-5.  This past Sunday I  AB both components with my local audiophile friend present.  We started with the new component and played familiar music we know and then swapped in the S-5.  The S-5 being tube based was considerably warmer sounding and definitely more warmed sounding prior to internal TC treatment from recent memory.  I thought maybe I went too far with TC (my thoughts on Sunday ).  I let TC settle in for 3 days without changing anything in my system and listened yesterday to the same music with my friend.  The magic returned and then some.  I totally agree with Grannyring, the improvement TC provides far exceeds internal wire, capacitor and resistor changes or competing tweaks previously reviewed.  The internal TC treatment of my S-5 resulted in a big jump in resolution and transparent and made me forget the inclination to upgrade to a new digital front end that adds DSD.  Adding more TC to my reviewing system hasn't resulted in diminishing returns but to the contrary.  The musicality of my system has improved with each additional application of TC. 
I have the new product in my system in various locations.  This new product will obsolete some of the tweaks discussed above.
I mean "some" of the assorted tweaks. Not TC. The new product will perform at a much higher level for the $ as compared to some of the other tweaks. TC and the new product work together.
jay23, coincidently, Moreno Mitchell was over yesterday to hear my system, since he was in a hurry previously, the first time, he drove out to my house to deliver speakers. He lives about 3 hours away and if was wasn’t impressed the first time when he heard my system, I don’t think he would have driven over a second time to hear my system. Why don't you seek your fulfillment else where and inhabit some other thread.