Dirty valve pins / bases

I thought my ST20 was developing a problem yesterday when it started making noises like waves crashing on a beach, but after a bit of pfaffing around it seems as though at least one of the ecc83's was suffering from bad contacts, as wiggling it around and re-seating it seems to have cured it.

So thought it might be a good move to clean as many of those contacts up as poss, any suggestions on what to use or avoid. General switch cleaner OK?

 

I use general switch cleaner - cotton bud and clean pins all round. Never needed to clean the sockets - I do this once a year as part of check bias / voltages and pin clean along with the other connections - mains, speaker, interconnects.

Probably why I've never heard that problem on my system you had

 

Caig 'Deox-it' is good stuff.

Quick squirt, push the valve in and out a few times and let dry for a couple of minutes.

 

Cheers Steve / Rob. I have some switch cleaner so I'll do them all with that right now and get some deoxit on order.

Dave