Are you handy w/a dremel tool? Do you feel confident cuting out an opening for a chassis mount IEC plug using a grinding disk attachment? This will give the best sonic results but you have to know what you doing and have to be very careful. It does not have to be mounted where your existing cord is. Use silver-bearing solder and be sure you do not get any dust inside your CDP. Is your stock cord 18ga? IF IT IS, change it out to 16ga. wire. If it is 16 ga. leave it alone unless you're able and willing to install an IEC chassis mount plug. Finally, add a ferrite clamp magnet to the cord inside the chassis. It will most likely improve the sound. (The new Marantz CD-5003 CDP uses 2 clamp magnets and 2 round ferrite magnets. It came stock this way! (At least mine did.) VERY impressive build quality considering its $349 retail price. I did changed out the C7 IEC plug to a regular IEC Furatech plug after trying an C7 adaptor IEC plug which didn't make any real improvement. The Furatech IEC plug made a hugh improvement in sound quality. What was Marantz thinking of?) I hope this helps. Bill