2. cables
  3. 132000-81298

A better lamp cord for my stereo equipment?

A lot of space goes to the 14, 12, 10 gauge, monster-sized, plug in, power cables.  Rightfully so.   I have my favorite power cables in place on my amps and also on some of my source equipment. But, some of us have older pieces in our systems and many of these older pieces do not have the plug in, switchable cords. I have a few pieces that were built with the old, permanent, lamp cords.
I've alwys wondered about those cords, but I never see any posts about them. Service people don't like the idea of drilling out the cord opening in older equipment to allow for thicker gauge wires, so we seem to be stuck with similar sized cords.
Have any of you ever upgraded/replaced your cords on older equipment?  Do you know of a better grade of lamp cord out there?  Would just replacing the plug help?
toolbox149

Showing 2 responses by toolbox149

toolbox149 OP
248 posts
 
OK    Uncle, uncle!

I just had some great sucess with two cord upgrades for my Bryston amps and I thought my good, 60 year old, McIntosh C-20 preamps and a few of my old signal processors might also benefit from a cord upgrade, if there was a new type of cord out there that might provide an improvement.  
I have to admit I'm a bit befuddled by the fact that the cords have a, "Do not touch" policy attached to them (legal-wise), when I've had capacitors replaced in the power supply in many of my components.
Nevertheless, I was hoping someone would say, "Try this new, oxygen-free copper plus silver, stranded, twisted, cooked, directional cord from So-and-so Supply Co.
Since there doesn't seem that anybody has ever built a better lamp cord, and techs might not be willing to replace the cord anyway; this idea will just have to go on the Not Feasible pile.
Thanks for all of the responses. 

Toolbox
toolbox149 OP
248 posts
 
JEA
Bingo. I think you just hit the nail on the head. The two times I broached this topic with audio techs the excuse for not doing the conversion was they didn't want to drill/cut into the back of the unit. (We wouldn't want to drill holes in your Mc C-20. That would diminish it's resale value.")
It was never a question of legalities. Otherwise, if a tech couldn't legally work within/on the power supply, you'd have to junk any piece of equipment that ever developed a problem with the power supply.

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