Effects Of Power Cords On Electrostatic Speakers

Peter Walker's discovery of the million ohm charging resistor was the breakthrough that made ESL speakers possible! Since ESL's draw so little AC current even a 22 gauge cord will work fine!

@jhnnrrs ​​​​​+1! Nice to hear a voice of reason here!

Hello guys, I have owned ALL quad ESL speakers and now I own Sound Lab A645. While the difference is not huge, power cables do matter. So... anyone that says it's a BS, shall upgrade other elements in his system, as the difference realy came into focus when all other components of your system are sufficently resolving. You do not have to purchase particularly expensive power cables, but I strongly recommend to test at least a couple of good audiophile-grade power cables. One of my clients is using Fadel Art "Coherence Cables" that are known to work extremely well with electrostats. Mr. Fadel was obsessed with ESL speakers, and was a big admirer of Roger West's work. This cable provides a phenomenally deep soundstage. I use custom built cables made by Mr. Hai from Paris (those are cheaper and to my ear even better sounding). I would recommend any cable that works on Faraday's cage principle. For exemple in France we have WhyNot cables that use that principle, but I'm sure you will find simmilar cables in USA as well. Everything matters, less or more, but that's how audiophile world works. And by the way, your ESL speakers need OTL amplfiers to give their best, as you already know.

@bellemusique -1! OTL tube amps like my Julius Futterman H3aa's are uncomfortable with speaker loads below 8 ohms. ESL speakers drop to 2 ohms or less at high frequencies. OTL amps lose power and are stressed by such low impedances. So not recommended, though they are fine with the capacitive load of ESL's.

A better choice for ESL’s are regular transformer-coupled tube amps. Their output trannies provide isolation against such low impedances.