Using silver plating polish

[Stephen]

To improve connectivity through the mains sockets I'm trying to silver plate the brass pins of my UK MK mains plugs. I'm trying a chemical, silver depositing soultion (Sheffield Plate Silver Polish), but find that even after mutiple attempts, all I'm getting is brighter, smoother brass ! Slightly paler in colour than when I started but certainly not silver coloured. I've tried finding details of the polish manufacturers to no avail as I wondered whether the stuff has a shelf-life and mine is out of date. The solution is pinky-brown and sort of sludgy. Has anyone else tried this ? Do MK mains plugs have a coating on the pins that I need to strip away first, does the solution itself sound right ? Any help welcome.

[ben]

Your waisting your time, that silvering polish was meant to resilver numeric antique clock dials,the brass has to be shiny and smooth and to be honest silver pins on plugs will not improve the connectivity because it will wear off as you fit plug in/out of socket. That silvering polish comes in two products..silvering&finishing.

[Ian Stirling]

Why on earth would you want to? Unless they are overheating, in which case simply polish them back to clean brass. If still overheating, you need to replace the faulty socket.

[dingbat]

Try posting this to rec.audio.insane-fruitbats

This is such a pointless idea that I can't even begin to get the enthusiasm up for posting about silvering brass. You have no idea how dischuffed I have to be to get to that state - this is a mind-buggeringly stupid waste of effort.

[Rob Morley]

Just plug and unplug a few times to clean the surfaces - or are you going to dismantle the sockets and plate their contacts too? Silver is used for cabling rather than contacts anyway - you want gold plating to keep the contact surfaces clean.

[Matt]

Probably a Hi-Fi nut. Silver, despite being the best conductor will oxidise so he really ought to gold plate it instead. Somewhere I have an MK Safeplug that I gold plated about 20 years ago. It's not on the Hi-Fi though as that makes sod all difference - it probably ended up on the video or the microwave ;-)

[Grunff]

???

Because you're getting too much signal loss at 50Hz or what?

Why do you want silver plated pins?

[manatbandq]

And the socket and the fuse in the consumer unit and the electricity co's fuse and carrier and...

There is one born every mnute.

MBQ

[Rob Morley]

So how much will it cost to run silver from whichever part of the National Grid his power is coming from ATM to his house?

Why do people go to all this trouble to "clean" their mains supply when they should obviously be using a shed full of car batteries to power their kit anyway?

[ben]

U still need elecy to charge the batteries, I use 500 hamsters on a wheel gen. :-)

[Ian White]

Maplin's car hi-fi range used to include a gold-plated battery clamp... with a gold-plated Allen key to do it up.

[Frank Erskine]

Naturally the National Grid cables should be renewed with oxygen-free copper.

:-)

[Mr Fizzion]

Wouldn't one donkey be as good? Or, come to think of it, any very large mammal with legs?

Mr F.

[Bob Mannix]

You don't need too many!:

Mannix

[ben]

No, cost too much in carrots to keep. :-)

[PC Paul]

Love the customer comment: "...after the full burn in period..."

I really must set up an audiophile shop.

[Rob Morley]

That's either very funny or slightly worrying - I'm not sure which.

[Bob Mannix]

I believe it is called "esoteric" hi fi - it's better but you can't hear the difference. Clothes, new, emperor's etc. Bloody sure you would say it was good after paying that amount!

Bob Mannix

[sm_jamieson]

I suppose RF filtering may help the amp, but you can filter RF without some weird silver "weave". He probably wears a silver weave on his head when listening to his hi-fi. I wonder if the "burn-in" idea came from him, or from the Kord people. Simon.

[Bob Mannix]

Mind you, compared with 8ft of tri-wire speaker cable, it's farily reasonable...