There are people that claim silver solder is better maybe they are correct but to my mind if the connector is not silver and the wire is not silver what difference does it make?
Chris Church
anyone have any decent but not too overly outrageously price soldering guns?
Sonic Studios is a BIG fan of Weller-(now)Cooper soldering tools.
Silver alloyed solder tends to NOT leach out precious metals. Switches, connectors, PCB traces, and components with gold plated surfaces, and well as some surface mounted components benefit from silver bearing solder. I tend to use silver alloy solder for these reasons and because lower temp melting eutectic solders mostly come with ~2% silver alloy.
BTW Silver is a BETTER conductor of electricity than GOLD. Gold vs. silver is used because of better oxidation/corrosion resistance of gold.
A discussion of benefits/detractions of various forms of gold plating found on common connectors is found at:
www.sonicstudios.com/tips.htm