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Rhodium plated mains plug

antonio1

pfm Member
I'd like to fit one to my cables and ouch the likes of furutech are really expensive.
just come across the alixxxpress site, well we all know there's about fakes OK but some state they're really copper inside and not brass.
Any experience ?
 
Rhodium plating doesn't tarnish and is more durable than gold plating, so I can see that it might be useful for critical audio cables which are frequently unconnected and reconnected.

Rhodium is however a poorer electrical conductor than copper.

Personally, I just unplug and plug back in all my equipment once in a while to clean all the connections, no other action is required.

Rhodium plating is a costly process and is environmentally harmful. It strikes me as being totally overkill on mains plugs and surely you would also want the contacts inside your wall socket rhodium plated too otherwise you won't have clean corrosion free connections anyway.

Unplugging and reconnecting your cables once in while is sufficient to maintain nice shiny connections and surely that's all we want?
 
Although the platinum group metals are harder than gold, they do have compounds that are stable at room temperature, so are at least theoretically subject to corrosion.

Gold is unique in that all its compounds (except the telluride) are unstable at room temperature and want to break down back to metallic gold. Unless you need mechanical toughness, gold is the right choice for long lived electrical plating.
 
If you use rhodium plugs then the tarnish will be inside you sockets. I'd prefer it tother way round so I can clean em.
 
Are you saying that using rhodium plugs will cause the sockets to tarnish? And that non-rhodium plugs won't? :confused:

No, what he is saying is that no matter what the plugs are made of it won't stop the contacts in the sockets from tarnishing.

To be honest, I don't think it matters much what the plugs or sockets are plated with compared to how tight the connections are.
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If you need a 13A plug that can safely take very thick cable then my favourite is the one by MS HD Power http://www.airaudio.co.uk/brands/ms-hd-power/. They do a rhodium plated version though, personally, I would just use the copper one.
 
No, what he is saying is that no matter what the plugs are made of it won't stop the contacts in the sockets from tarnishing.

To be honest, I don't think it matters much what the plugs or sockets are plated with compared to how tight the connections are.
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If you need a 13A plug that can safely take very thick cable then my favourite is the one by MS HD Power http://www.airaudio.co.uk/brands/ms-hd-power/. They do a rhodium plated version though, personally, I would just use the copper one.
That's just your interpretation of what he said. And the MS plugs START at £30! I plug and unplug many times over the years, so rhodium makes sense for me. Gold tends to wear through.
 
That's just your interpretation of what he said. And the MS plugs START at £30! I plug and unplug many times over the years, so rhodium makes sense for me. Gold tends to wear through.

Wow! How many times per day do you plug and unplug? Guitar cord jacks tend to get plugged and unplugged multiple times per evening, day in day out, and they are not made of rhodium...
 


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