Are contact treatments worth the money?

Hard to beat Markphd's original response. Nothing wrong with also doing a little wiping with fine emery & cleaning if desired. Away from the audiophile world you are not likely to find high cost fairy goop in critical signal paths (I think the reason for this is that testing and calibration instruments are greatly lacking in imagination). You will find some relatively low dollar goop used to help prevent a hot joint where fairly high currents are involved.

Hmmmm...sounds like many of you like Walker Fairy Goop. I am going to rent an electron microscope and see what happens at the intersection of current, metal and goop.

This may come as a shock(no pun intended), BUT- Electron Microscopes were NOT so named because they can actually observe electrons. =8^)

Viiu- The key to avoiding the problems you've encountered in your use of a conductive product is the term, "sparingly". Many have applied much more than needed, with the same results as you. KUDOS on not throwing out the baby with the bath water. You could still gain much more by applying the product to your RCA positive, and tube pins(sparingly and avoiding any bridging between conductors). Happy listening!

Well said, Rodman99999.

I completely agree with your statement, "Testing is invariably done with relatively simple signals, generated by equipment that I'd never listen to on my system. Testing done, and empirical data collected by, listening to actual music is scoffed at. That doesn't surprise me in the least as there are multitudes in this world that are unable to hear, recognize or(perhaps) admit the differences/improvements that result from our innovations and tweaks."

I have read about Ken Stevens' audio engineering and design methods -- design, build, test, listen to music, re-design... I respect it very much! He uses testing to evaluate his equipment to determine if re-design will improve performance, but he also uses music listening to determine this. I would bet a lot of audio component engineers are designing so that test measurements will just get product out the door. I am sure this is nothing new.

I enjoyed your reply. It made me think.