Quad ESL 63 In Another League Now

I’ve owned many speakers over 30 years. I now have owned a total rebuilt ESL 63’s with the work done by Electrostatic Solutions. Kent did a wonderful job and the speakers sounded better than stock that I can say for sure. During the last few months for the fun of it I added better power cords, though Kent said they cannot make a difference well I can tell you they do and they do in a big way, so if you own any Electrostatic speakers you owe it to yourself to put better power cords on them even the Signal Cable power cords were a big step up from the stock power cord.

So things were just great then I read in my Furman reference 20i manual that the high current outlets are great for active speakers, though I read it, I never tried it because they sounded so good. Well blow me away, I tried it, and wow, more natural, clearer, bottom end more dynamic, and so forth, but the lowering of the noise floor, brought forth detail, more natural body, warmth, and a pitch black background, i.e. a grayness or veil in comparison gone, and I mean gone.

I never knew just how good these speakers were until I did the power cords, but in addition what the Furman does, with lower impedance, reservoir or current on demand, and of course the isolation between any interaction of the components. I also added some nice ebony cones with a copper tip (cheap) on Amazon, for a nice tilt back of about one inch which opened up the speakers and really made imaging better.

In this hobby, we are always learning something, and the big lesson I keep learning is always try something, even when some may say it will not make a difference, such as power cords cannot impact the Quads, well they do so try it. The bottom end now really go low and tight, I added 2 small Mini Vee subs crossed over at 40Hz for that last bit of bottom end in the 20’s range.

The rest of my system is McIntosh 402 amp at 400 watts, Luxman C800F preamp, and the Esoteric K-01 SACD/CD player with streaming capabilities. All cables are Lessloss Marc-C( the best I’ve ever heard) regardless of cost and that includes the ones with the big network boxes. Power cords the Luxman (for the preamp) beats anything I’ve tried and that is the stock cord, Crystal Clear Opus for the Esoteric, Essential Sound MusicSound Pro for the McIntosh Amp. I use a pair of the Emotivia Power cords for the quads due to their length, they work just fine, the AntiCables reference 3 power cords work well also with a bit more mid-bass and warmth but were a bit too short.

No matter how long you’re in this hobby you can always learn, and improve the system without buying new gear, in fact, I would say the power cords can change the sound of your system as much as a new piece of gear and even the wall plates impact the sound, not just the ac outlet. That also was a surprise to me. Go figure!