Walker SST contact enhancer

Dave, as I understand the theory behind the Eichmann plugs and the new WTB RCAs, it's about reducing the amount of metal (and dielectric) in the connection more than reducing the contact area per se. There's a discussion of the design philosophy in a an article in Issue 71 of UHF Magazine.

I'm sorry, Dave. Your question lost me. The point of the small contact on the Eichmann and new WBT plugs is to reduce the amount of metal in the connectors, not simply reduce the surface area of the point of contact. It's the mass of metal they're trying to reduce, not the surface area per se.

As to using a contact enhancer, anytime there is a connection point, the electrical current has to make a jump across a physical junction: there will always be some amount of resistance and some amount of interference. Lloyd Walker talks about this from his experience with fine tuning control systems in nuclear power plants and chemical plants: wherever there is a connection, you can see on a scope the spike of spurious energy created at that junction point. That spurious energy is going somewhere, often as some form of distortion feedback back into the system. The contact enhancer will help reduce that, whether at the low signal level of an interconnect, or the higher power level of a circuit breaker in your junction box. From an article about Lloyd by Srajan Ebaen published at EnjoyTheMusic.com:

"One of his standard test procedures of the day involved the use of time domain reflectometers to test the integrity of critical wiring, say to the core of a nuclear reactor. Despite super-expensive connectors in the $1-3K per range that make our audiophile WBT jewelry look like candy box treats, Walker recalls that each such juncture and connection still caused very obvious signal spikes and noise reflections on his test gear. This constituted but one of many hands-on insights that would later find expression in his audio design work even though not all phenomena in the industrial arena translate directly into ours." http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/earwax/1201/

Hi Dave, I think the philosophy of reducing the amount of metal in a connector has some solid theoretical foundation (as best I can understand it since I'm just a lay person), and I think the theory is being substantiated in some applications (for example, 47Labs has been doing this in their designs for years).

As to the Mapleshade Silclear, I think you'd have a different and more positive experience with the Walker Audio SST and Extreme SST. It also is highly conductive so you have to be careful with it as well, but it does not migrate (even under high heat) and it dries to a soft texture rather than remaining a paste. This makes it much more resistent to going places you would never want it to travel. Some people have noted a concern about the dried SST flaking, so again there is still room for good caution. In my system, I found the Extreme SST to make such a significant positive improvement that I consider it a necessary part of my system setup, with all the appropriate considerations for use duly noted.
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Thanks for the follow-up, Mem916. Glad to hear its making a positive difference for you. Keep in mind that the break in will be most rapid on those contacts that have a larger electrical flow (power cords and speaker cables) and will require longer on connections like phono cables and phono cartridge pins. On phono cartridge pins, allow for about 20-hours of break-in versus approx. 5-hours for speaker cables. Applying E-SST on tube pins (particularly phono stage tubes) was worth the effort here.
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