Some were just plain stupid, like placing the speakers facing away from you, or ripping expensive speakers open to take out all the carefully assessed and positioned damping.
I do remember one of Jimmy’s barking tweaks was to scratch two parallel lines with a scribe on the pins of each mains plug. Yes - that’s true. And like a moron (things haven’t changed much) I did that very thing, as I didn’t have the greenbacks to buy new HiFi in those days. Needless to say nothing happened other than accusations by my late wife that I should consider taking up knitting.
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I remember that too. And did the same as you. With a similar outcome.
Funnily enough I remember aligning the screw clamps on the mains plugs with quite noticeable results. I even blind tested people who had no idea what I was doing, again with good results. 
I mainly remember the absolute disdain that Hi Fi Review had for most of these. I loved how emphatic they were against anything tweaky unless sanctioned by Ivor or JV. The one they did promote was the single pair of speakers idea as far as I recall.
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Paul Benson of HFR was a PB advocate. HFR even supplied PB foil traingles.
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Did he? My memory is not what it was. I have a few copies upstairs somewhere, I might go and have a look…
He did. I had every single issue 
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Removing all but the rear foam from Mission 700s put a bit of life into them at the expence of some colouration, the foam stayed out.
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Good point TM! They were at least mostly cheap daft ideas…
Solid core twin and earth sure was the cheapest speaker cable ever!
I used that with the missions too I got a good 10 years use out of that solid core before A5 invaded my system, which makes those two lengths of A5 the oldest Naim item in my system, I even had a service (resoldered) a few years ago thus following Naim folk lore.
What is the point of buying speakers that have been carefully designed to perform in a certain way, them ripping them apart? But cruder speakers to start with - they tend to be cheaper! As for colouration, makes me think of Kans, and people calling then fun (can of worms now opened wide…!! 
)
Was the idea of using copper water pipes (15mm) with internal runs of multi-strand cable one of his ideas? The idea was that the multi-strand cable (using very fine strands of copper) would carry the high frequencies, which travel mostly on the surface of cables, and the copper pipes would carry the bass frequencies.
If it wasn’t you might be on to something there.
I don’t recall that one, but you may be right Beachcomber. I guess solid core mains cable was a middle ground at 2.5mm2 IIRC…
I met Jimmy Hughes a couple of times via a mutual friend and spent an evening listening to his system in his Barbican flat. I also met Peter Belt at the Heathrow HiFi Show. Belt was obviously a pure, out and out Schyster IMV, Jimmy’s motivations were always entirely earnest, if ultimately somewhat out there…
A CD lathe, a must for any plastic spinning disc perfectionist.
Never owned one but was always curious if it actually worked, shame they cost silly money and were massive.
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Is Room Optimization an hifi folklore? or DSP?
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umm, no
I’m still surprised by how many of my cd’s have the green band around them . Many more than my lps i have with “last” stickers on the album cover to remind me they had been treated. And btw, the green treated cds sounded much better , if you tilted your head to the right about 30 degrees and had a poodle at your feet.
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No one ever lost money by overestimating the stupidity of the general public. But plenty of money has been lost by underestimating it.
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Well I was pleased with the result so went on to experiment with my own crossovers. Raising the crossover point so I could get away with 1st order with the existing tweeter and relying on the woofer to reach a bit higher, which it seemed to cope with well enough. I had access to an LCR bridge so could wind my own coils (on fishing line spools with hot melt glue to secure the wire) and match them, I also matched the polypropylene caps (fashionable at the time). The rest of the system was a MK2 Rock with RB300, 17/D2 into a Michell iso (almost, the board was from Tom Evans, the box from Maplins and the transformer out of a defunct ACS chromatography pump) and a Sansui AU217. This system lasted 10 years and the speakers carried on when the amp became a Nait 5 (briefly) and then a Rega Cursa/Maia, seeing off a pair of Royd Doublets around then and until the second time the woofer surrounds perished.
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I recall working with one of those!