Is your copper pure copper or electrical wire? The purer sacrificial material (anode) will give cleaner results. Buy some copper plates from Rio and add a fair amount of brightener. Junk copper from the hardware store is an alloy of copper and it sometimes has coatings that prevent ion flow. If you don't give your solution a good clean ion source, it will strip the solution of what ions it can, stealing from the CuSO4 in the solution, which causes the dull color as the metal is not pure copper. I would also recommend the carbon filtering that was already mentioned and thoroughly cleaning your anode with a hydrochloric acid bath before use.
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