Pure Power

For those of you who are looking for AC power that is already clean to start with, instead of trying to clean it up, I have found somthing you may want to try. I have been using it for some time now, and it is very good. I use a Studer(Revox) Pure-Sine power inverter to create my own 120VAC power from a battery bank of 12vdc Trojan T105 golf cart batteries. It creates a pure, clean 120VAC 60Hz sine wave output that is fully regulated to within 5% and has less than .05% distortion at rated power. It is totally quiet, both audibly and electrically. For those on street mains power, a suitable inexpensive battery charger can be used to charge the batteries out of your wall socket during periods of non-use of the system. Turn off the charger during the playing of your audio system to avoid noise from the charger. I can turn my system up full, and put my ear to my 100db speakers and hear NOTHING. It's black.(Except on phono input, where I hear the tubes because of high gain.) You have to get a suitably sized battery bank and inverter to meet your system's power requirements and desired run-time. I have a 400 watt inverter and 880 amp/hour battery bank, and I can run mine all evening with no problems, but my system only pulls about 100 watts. Owners of large watt Class A systems will need much more battery and inverter capacity. The Studer line of inverters covers output wattages in different models from 200watts to 2000 watts-continuous. Someone who wants to use 2000 watts continuous will need alot of batteries. However, this is a way to get clean power from batteries, without modifying your equipment. You eliminate all sources of interference, including the stuff in your house, like the refrigerator and the low voltage lighting, etc. It has absolutely no common connection to the audio system at all. My 400 watt Studer inverter will run about a 100w amp, a typical preamp, a CD player, turntable, tuner, or (separately) most TV's and possibly a small HT setup. Anything under 400 watts total. If you need more, then simply get a higher power inverter. My 400 watt unit cost abut $450. My batteries cost about $400. A charger is about $50. If you want to, Studer offers the same inverters with a solar charging circuit, to allow you to hook solar panels directly to it, and charge the batteries by the sun. The 2000 watt unit is around $2k. So for an expenditure of about $900 minimum(for a smaller system like mine) you can get total purity of power. This is less than a single high end power cord from some companies. And this power will be better than you can get from the street mains, with ANY KIND of power cord or conditioner, no matter how much you spend. The absolute finest power cord and line conditioner money can buy cannot equal this setup. I used a hospital grade receptacle for the output of the inverter, and my regular audiophile-quality power cords to plug into it. For those who want the best, and have some room for battery bank storage, this is the way. And, as an added benefit, it is cheaper than many "power scrubbers" that cost more, but are not as good. I am using this, so I do not overstate or have a lack of understanding of the real-world characteristics of using a system like this. I live with it every day, and listen to it every night. BTW, you won't believe how your TV picture looks with a rig like this to provide ultra-pure power to it. These units are Swiss-made to the most exacting standards. The quality is up to the best of any of your audio components. The batteries are the industry standard for golf cart deep-cycle severe duty. This setup has been tested over the long term by me, and I can recommend its use without reservation. It is NOT a half-baked theory. If you are using any 12vdc operated preamps, or directly heating your tube filaments with 12vdc, you can tap the dc directly off the same battery bank to run your 12vdc stuff. I do this with my filaments and TT motor. My amp is all 12vdc operated triode ZOTL. My CD player and the high voltage in my preamp is run off the Studer Inverter AC supply. Also, my TV is too. When listening upstairs, I use the Studer to power my Armstrong 626 reciever (40 watts) to very good effect. If you need 240VAC for your rewired componets like amps, you can use a toroidal autoformer to step-up the voltage for you. Trace Engineering makes a 2kva or 4kva one that is very good for this use. I'm just sharing this as an option for you to get the right kind of clean power, without spending a ton of money to clean up the dirty junk that comes from the street, that never gets really clean anyway. Another cool thing is, that if the street power ever goes out, you can still listen to your system, watch TV, or run a few lights and appliances off of your battery powered auxiliary AC supply. Try it, you'll like it.