about to jump into the power cord foray

Good advice from Kotta. The only reason you would need a new power cord is if the old one is frayed, the female end has become loose, or it is drastically undersized. Paying more than a total of $20 or so $ for a power cord is a complete waste of money. It is one thing for someone to throw money away that has no budget concers but when someone states that they have to wait to purchase equipment due to funds, it is a shame if they waste money. A 20 dollar power cord, whether bought or put together from home depot as Kotta suggested will do everything that a $500 dollar power cord will do or a power cord made for the space shuttle for that matter. I have heard too many ridiculous claims about power cords and cable. My undergrad was BSEE and I spent years in the field of electronics. If you approached any group of degreed engineer (that did not have a pecuniary stake in selling the cables and cords) with the stuff that gets posted about improvement in audio due to power cords and cables, you would have to wait for them to stop laughing to get a response. I recently read a post where a person suggested that a three wire power cord with the female end plugged into a two wire socket through an adapter was a good idea because the ground wire provided a partial shield. This is hogwash. To the OP -take Kotta's advice - if you need new power cords buy a bunch of 12/3 and some plugs and make your own. Put the money saved into something that makes a difference other than feeding the seller a large profit margin.

Basing your decisions on other than empirical evidence is not a very intelligent way to go about anything that is subject to science. People do it all the time, visit fortune tellers, try to treat disease through the use of herbs and 'liniments', avoid the use of the number '13', 'spot' reduce fat by doing situps, avoid housing near high voltage power lines, and a host of other useless practices. In an area where the science is well defined it makes no sense to base decisions on other than emperical evidence (as opposed to one's imagination). Science as applied to the field of audio reproduction and effects of various parts of a system is well defined. A field where there is less clear definition is that of medicine when it comes to many diseases. Yet would you go to a physician licensed to practice medicine who tells you "the only treatment for your cervical spine disc disease is surgery which will reduce the range of motion" as opposed to paying a "healer" or other witch doctor who suggests waving chicken bones near your neck, because although there isn't emperical evidence that the chicken bones work, science does not know everything about arthritis and the chicken bones really do work. The first choice is rational and based in science and emperical evidence, but doesn't give you the answwer you would like. The second choice gives you the answer you would like but is hogwash. Buying a new power cord promises to improve your sound system, but is hogwash. What is not defined in the audio hobby are things like the choices made by a conductor - whether it is more authentic to play Mozart on period instruments, or what Beethoven was conveying with notes to his works. The effect of cables and power cords is not subject to other than emperical evidence. The rest is akin to two headed babies, aliens from Alpha Centauri, and the treatment of arthritis with chicken bones. Basing your decisions on other than emperical evidence backed by scientific theory was the whole basis for the old sideshow - and the buyers of the tickets were referred to as 'rubes'. The only benefit to high priced power cords and speaker cable is to the seller.