Chitosan Antibacterial? The Cotton Swabs I Use for Hi-Fi Maintenance Are…

I have written before about using PANDO29D electronic contact cleaner and Mitsuwa’s Paper Cement Solvent for cleaning the metal terminals and other contact points on audio equipment — and the cotton swabs I use alongside them are these. In recent years, almost all cotton swabs sold in ordinary pharmacies and supermarkets in Japan have been treated with chitosan antibacterial processing, but these ones are purchased from the 100-yen shop Daiso, and are among the rare non-antibacterial, plain cotton swabs. Though, really, the level of thoroughness with which absolutely everything gets antibacterial treatment — that’s uniquely Japanese, isn’t it…

Could the chitosan antibacterial agent contained in the fibres (apparently extracted from the shells of red snow crabs) leach out? Or is it actually entirely harmless? I don’t honestly know either way — it may well be completely unrelated and not a problem at all — but for the time being, what I don’t fully understand is best avoided for peace of mind, so I try to use non-antibacterial cotton swabs on audio equipment wherever possible. In recent years, however, non-antibacterial swabs have been all but driven out of general retail, and can now only really be found in 100-yen shops. Or rather, even in 100-yen shops, more than half the swabs on the shelf have recently become chitosan-antibacterial spec, which makes this particular Daiso series something rather precious. 《Later note, 2015: Non-antibacterial cotton swabs have now been gone from every 100-yen shop for quite some time.》

The baby swabs and spiral swabs are just the right size for the inside of RCA terminal sockets and the tips and inner surfaces of pin cables — and also for the interior of female inlet plugs on power cables. Standard-sized swabs work well for the outside of RCA terminals and inside speaker terminals. The large round shower-head swabs are a good fit for the outer surfaces of various terminals, mains plugs, AC inlets on the equipment side, the ends of speaker cables, Y-lugs, and banana plugs.

And something that cannot be overlooked is the pickup lens. Starting with PC optical drives, whenever reading becomes suspect on a CD player, DVD player, Blu-ray recorder, or anything similar, I do not use a rotary lens cleaner — instead, I soak a baby cotton swab in isopropyl alcohol and, “with the utmost care”, clean the pickup lens from directly above with the lightest possible pressure and a gentle circular motion. Even when no dust is visible, years of use inevitably cause moisture, oils, and other contaminants in the air to cling to the lens and cause it to cloud over. Depending on the unit, this alone can reduce disc-skipping, or — whether because servo jitter is suppressed or for some other reason — the perceived sound quality can become noticeably cleaner. 《Depending on the model, this may require removing the top panel or disassembling the drive mechanism, and any physical contact with the lens carries a direct risk of damage, so please proceed entirely at your own risk.》

The weakness is that, being budget 100-yen-shop cotton swabs, the handle snaps rather easily. On one occasion the head of a swab came off inside an RCA socket, and I was in quite a panic trying to retrieve the cotton tip. I managed to get it out in the end using a method shown to me by a friend who is skilled at scale modelling — bending the tip of a thin dressmaker’s pin into an L-shape of about 1 mm with a pair of pliers. In a genuine emergency, this turns out to be a surprisingly practical approach.

For cleaning audio equipment, I now use modelling cotton swabs such as those made by Tamiya.

タミヤ メイクアップ材シリーズ No.104 クラフト綿棒 丸 Sサイズ 50本 87104

タミヤ(TAMIYA)

¥530 （2026/09/28 11:59時点 | Amazon調べ）

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Among products developed specifically for audio use, Audio-Technica‘s AC200 was one — lint-free and with a handle that resists snapping. The head is standard-sized, so cleaning the inside of RCA terminals is not possible, but it was originally sold for cleaning tape deck heads and transport mechanisms. At some point it was discontinued. I now use various craft cotton swabs made for modelling and industrial purposes by Tamiya and GSI Creos as substitutes.

OPSOLU 端子クリン標準セット 11機種 18種類 計25個入 CLN11-18-25

OPSOLU

¥4,045 （2026/09/28 18:59時点 | Amazon調べ）

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Audio-Technica also used to make a product called the AT604, a cleaning stick designed for RCA terminal cleaning. I used it once, more than fifteen years ago, back when I was still an audio novice. It is made from a fairly firm material, and can clean both the inside and outside of an RCA terminal at the same time, with the other end for cleaning pin cable terminals. Being a dedicated tool, it was genuinely easy to use — but it would turn pitch-black almost immediately, and the unit cost was high. Personally speaking, outrageously high. As a result, I ended up switching to cotton swabs thereafter. Back then, these sorts of swabs and terminal cleaners were even stocked in the AV section of ordinary supermarkets…