Reclaiming Lost Guitar Tone With PureConnect
Contact cleaners, cotton swabs, and abrasives like graphite and sandpaper are often go-to cleaning solutions in the live audio industry. Like most guitar technicians, Jimmy Bee thought these crude tools were good enough to clean cable connectors and gear jacks for the musicians he toured with. For especially dirty or corroded jacks, his “caveman approach” was to use a fine piece of steel wool to lightly polish the sockets.
“You can tell when something’s not making the proper connection. But the thing is, you don’t want to scratch anything with graphite, you just want to clean it,” says Jimmy, a former guitarist and live audio tech who has toured with artists like Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Lou Reed, and Weezer. “I’ve always been looking for a cleaner, nicer approach to do that. Then, I came across the Stedman website when I was looking for a quarter-inch jack cleaner.”
Just one thorough wipe-down with Stedman’s PureConnect kit revolutionized Jimmy’s maintenance routine for good. His artists—and their fans—instantly heard the difference.
Contending with the elements
The transformation began about six months ago, when Jimmy was touring Jamaica with the rock band Little Feat. “Beautiful country,” he says, “but horrible weather,” at least from the perspective of an audio technician trying to keep sensitive instruments clean. “Humidity, salt, moisture, sand—it’s really the enemy of electronics. You can do the math and figure out that just leads to rust.”
Jimmy Bee on tour with PureConnect
Both of the band’s main guitarists, Scott Sharrard and Fred Tackett, had at least half a dozen effect pedals on each of their pedal boards—which meant there were a lot of connector jacks and cables accumulating the elements of the Caribbean.
After a week in Jamaica, Little Feat and crew boarded a cruise ship, where they performed several more shows onboard. That added even more salt and moisture to the gear, and as a result, the artists and audiences alike were starting to hear the difference this build-up caused.
“Fred was taking the tone control on his Fender Twin from a 2 all the way to an 8, because of the signal loss from the damaged connections,” Jimmy says. “Because of the Jamaican run and then going directly to the cruise, it was obvious there was some corrosion inside the pedals. When you have a couple of cable connections that aren’t making an earnest connection, you can hear it.”
The elements were taking a toll on the audio signal, just as dirty spark plugs might slow down a racecar. “If you have a V8 engine but you only have six cylinders firing because of a gap in the spark plug, that has a huge effect on performance,” Jimmy says. “If a racecar driver is pulling over to readjust his spark plugs every lap or two, you’re going to lose a lot of ground.”
But it wasn’t just the technical audio quality that suffered; it was the emotion of the performance, too, because every time the guitarists had to adjust their amps, they had to turn their back to the audience.
“You want your artist to be focused on performing. You want him to be facing the crowd and not running back to the amp trying to turn up his tone, because there’s so much of a tonal loss from the faulty connects,” Jimmy says. “That takes away from the show, and the audience is going to see that.”
In fact, some of Little Feat’s die-hard fans even sent Instagram messages to Jimmy after the shows, asking why Fred kept messing with his amp during the performance. Realizing he needed something more effective than steel wool to clean up the gear after this tropical tour, Jimmy reached out to Stedman for a solution.
Bringing back the tone
The PureConnect connector cleaning kit from Stedman was the answer to Little Feat’s corrosion challenges. With a pack of disposable MicroFelt cleaning tips, a sturdy aluminum handle, and a tube of deoxidizing contact cleaner, the kit contained everything Jimmy needed to clean quarter-inch and XLR male and female connectors.
Michael LoBue on tour with PureConnect
“The amount of dirt and debris that came out of the pedals really grabbed my eye,” says Michael LoBue, who was working alongside Jimmy on Little Feat’s crew as a bass technician. “The product itself was a far superior type of tool to use for cleaning,” he says, especially compared to the rubbing alcohol, cotton swabs, and canned air he typically used.
After about half an hour cleaning the band’s gear, the difference was instantly evident in the sound.
“There was definitely less noise and fewer disruptions in the signal chain, which of course improves the overall sound,” says Michael, a live event production tech for over 30 years, who also works with artists like Nile Rodgers, Fab Faux, and Michael Franti and Spearhead. “No stretchiness, no glitches, no signal cutting in or out; it was just a clean, solid signal chain.”
As a result of the thorough PureConnect cleaning, Fred could finally turn his tone from 8 back down to 2—back to the original sound he expected from his guitar before the salt and sand interfered with the signal.
“That’s a humongous tonal difference,” Jimmy says, “and to be honest, that was a selling point for me. I’ve been using this stuff ever since, and I honestly don’t use anything else—certainly not anymore steel wool. Everything I do, maintenance-wise, from now on is going to be with Stedman products.”
Michael agrees that the PureConnect GP-2 Gig Pack is “mandatory” in his tech kit now. “The way they thought about it, the way they put it together, the different types of connectors it covers, the kit is a complete package,” he says. Plus, because the compact kit can fit easily into a guitar case, it’s a convenient size to add to his arsenal, even when he’s flying in for shows with limited space for tools.
Now, Jimmy is turning other artists onto PureConnect—recommending the cleaning kits to guitarists who play for Alanis Morissette, Jimmy Buffet, Weezer, and Alice Cooper. Convinced by the drastic audio improvements he heard, he’s on a mission to help performing artists bring live music back with a bang.
“We’re all ecstatic to see live music come back after a 16-month hiatus,” he says. “A lot of people were stuck indoors listening to the radio, and there’s a huge difference in the dynamics between listening to the radio and actually getting out of the house and experiencing a show. So, to be able to come back at this full force with solid maintenance products from Stedman really allows us to give our best show every single time. The whole line of Stedman products makes it sound as good on the 101st gig as it does on the first gig.”
