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ELROD new MASTER SERIES Statement Gold,a true surprise; changes the game considerably

ELROD new MASTER SERIES Statement Gold Power Cord:

Installed ONE of these in the system today on my Esoteric A-02 power amp to replace a 2 year old Elrod Statement Gold next-gen cable as a test.

Cable was cooked for 6 days and then rounded out by David on his system to a full 2 weeks of burn-in. 

To say the design changes are major would be a huge understatement....double the width of the widest ribbons used to date and double the count over what was already his latest generation design for Statement Gold; that's all that can be said. Furutech's latest FI-50 NCF connectors are utilized as they were determined to be superior to anything else available.

Within the first 12 hours the phrase (which I've only used once before for any cable) "component-level upgrade" came to mind. It's as if my amp had been further upgraded along with my entire system. This is no exaggeration and I'm surprised at the uplift from a single power cord from the level I already was experiencing. All frequency bands experienced significant changes for the better, an already 3-dimensional wrap-around soundstage on most recordings became an even more dense, musical energy-filled 3D wrap-around deeply immersive soundstage on EVERY recording, every note, voice, etc...became even more real and life-like, inner detail increased on most material (already have tons of inner detail thanks to the TAD R1s), musical energy increased in the room and the listener is pulled even deeper into the recording. I found myself rewinding or starting tracks over many times as the surprise factor with this change was extremely high.

I had talked to a couple of guys who had gone this route picking up this brand new cable family in the last month; they were saying that the Master Series Golds eclipsed the Diamond and MBX2 families of cables and simply blew the doors off the latest Statement Gold generation. That all sounded hard to believe (particularly the part about eclipsing MBX2 and Diamond/X2; after 12 hours, I do believe it to be true...

Tough part about the Elrod line is the website has not been updated in a long, long time as more time is spent on design and build than on marketing. My advice is to reach out to me or others using these cables and get some candid conversations going. Also, you can easily reach David Elrod via phone / email; he's a wealth of knowledge and will discuss cables, music, system design/synergy with any serious audio-nut.

It's been a very surprising day!
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jmcgrogan2's avatar
jmcgrogan2
6,346 posts
 
Yes, thanks for your thorough reply zephyr24069.

Now it’s just a matter of which car to sell so that I can try out some of David’s newer designs. ;^)


after that I plan to be done.

If I had a cable/cord for every time I heard that line.......sigh.
zephyr24069's avatar
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zephyr24069 OP
1,243 posts
 
You are very welcome....happy to help!  Note the wiggle-room in the phrase "I plan to be done,..." :-) !!!
gwalt
162 posts
 

I agree with all of you that David is a true gentleman and one of the finest power cord/cable designers of our era. I once owned a full loom of his cords in the Statements, Gold Statements, and a trial run with two Gold Statement X-2's.

My only complaint in owning them was the bulk and the timeframe to reach their full capacitance after an unplug. It had nothing to do with what they did to my system as they are wonderfully musical tools.

I have no doubt his new Master series is a winner. Best of luck to David and all those that are fortunate enough to own them.

gwalt

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zephyr24069 OP
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I absolutely agree with all that you've written about the designer; his constant innovation and desire to break new ground in his designs has helped me evolve my system to sound as I never thought possible.  The components and speakers I have now and have had in the past are great and offer world-class sound (IMHO); the Statement Gold PC(s), interconnects and speakers cables I use and now the Masters Series in select spots in the system helped me find the maximum performance of all my gear.  I am constantly amazed at the difference that power cords, interconnects and speaker cables can make as prior to 2006-2007 I was a huge skeptic and in this regard and NEVER thought at all seriously to put this much focus (and hard work/resources) in any HT, hybrid or dedicated 2-channel audio I've owned, "just into cables"!  The truth is with cables of this grade or others from Elrod, Kubala, Esoteric/Mexcel, WW, etc..that I've owned, Stage 3 and others that you and others have owned, these damned cables are full-on "components" in the system in an of themselves.  

His power cords and also the speaker cables and interconnects I've found have a literally mind-blowing capacitive capability/effect in the system.  Due to size and topology of the 'main body' of the cable and the other factors, they do require some extra thinking, planning, measuring and elegance/time put into placement but it is all more than worth it is all more than worth it in the long run!  

I have an all SS system; I have found my system sounds best if I simply leave it on 24x7 and power cycle the system with demag afterward every 10-14 days. This is also better for power supplies in the long run so I only experience the ramp-up time every couple of weeks; what I've found is that after things have more than 1000 hours on them, that the ramp-up/recharge phase only takes a few hours after a power-cycle, a bit more if the system is fully down for many days if I'm out of town for work, vacation, etc....

In short, if I ever worked in the audio industry as a dealer or a distributor, Elrod cables would be one of the first 5 most critical lines I would represent, the others being of course TAD, Legacy Audio, Isotek and Esoteric.  This list led by choice of cables first believe it or not, comes after many years of trial and error and for me, iis 'the' great list of "go to" brands for the best of musical enjoyment and performance at each given level.  There are clearly others but for me, this is where I would start.

I've heard good things about the Stage3 cords you show in your system...many people seem to love them and chase an entire loom of them after they hear them.  You have a beautiful system as well; I'm going to post on your thread in a little while. It must sound fantastic!!!
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