Has anyone tried home-made PCs offered on AudiogoN

Audioman, your analogy must be printed on a card somewhere because it is, nearly verbatim, what I have been told by a number of audio salesmen trying to sell me very expensive PC's. Up until the part about NOT passing along the "big" makers cost, that is! I agree that quality PC's DO make a difference. Though I have not tried your product, it is nice to see someone trying to produce a quality product at a price that resembles sanity. Good luck.

I have had very good experiences with BMI Whale Elite by Brian Introcaso and Maximum AC Gold by John Pavone. I have had in my set up various well regarded PC's like Vans Evers, JPS, and Jena Labs, but the Whales bettered them all. These cables are pretty well known and very positively rated with the Shunyatas KC, FIM's, and Electaglide by several users. You can do a search of PC and will find a lot of very good opinions on them. However as good as this PC's are you should do yourself a favor and try the Maximum AC Gold. These babies are made from stranded 99.9% oxigen free silver plated GAUGE 0 cooper and completely outperformed my Whales. At around $300 a piece that is a real steal considering that the Whales which you can get in auctions for around $450 are a bargain themselves by being in the league of $1 - $2,000 PC's.
As I said, do yourselves a favor and check them out, call John and talk to him, I guarranty you will find its an outright pleasure to do it.
Hope this helps and as Brian says, enjoy the music!

A friend bought a "home made" power cord marketed on Audiogon. The maker's philosophy is lots of copper, no shielding, and a low price. The sound was absolutely horrible. My buddy gave the power cord to me for free because he didn't feel right selling it to another Audiogon member. I gave it back to him. Yet the maker claims to have sold hundreds, if not thousands of these things.

Having tried to get something for nothing and failed, we've now both moved on to PS Audio Lab and Mini Lab cables and feel they are the true value in power cords. They work incredibly well, yet they are still priced within reason (relatively speaking, at least).

I've just installed a Signal Cable AC cord. It's only been a few days but clearly the improvment in sound is surprising. This is my first foray with power cords and I was skeptical. I've read every review I could get my hands on and prowled the 'net to absorb all I could on AC cords. I decided to go with this one because of price ($59 6ft.),quality of construction, and risk free 30 day home trial.

It's my opinion that cables absolutely,positively make an enormous difference. The problem is the cable industry's insane pricing standards. Major companies like Kimber, Monster, Audioquest, and others have a 300% to 800% mark-up. To me, this is almost criminal. These companies play on audiophiles insecurities and reinforce the notion that big bucks are the only way to quality sound.

I also believe that there is a defacto pricing fixing standard. Ever notice that each major cable company offers a similiar performance in each price range? Why can't one of these giants produce a breakthrough cable in the low price catagories? How come small internet outfits can? Why don't audiophile rags like Stereophile and The Absolute Sound review these small entrepreneurs? Think about it.

Thank the heavens we have micro sized companies like HomeGrown Audio, Signal Cable, and others.

Wake up, fellow audiophiles, if we spend our cable dollars sensibly by rejecting the overpriced offerings we will see the big guys dropping their prices to realistic, fairly priced, levels.