Best Power Cord

I've had my TGA SLVR cord for five months and I'm delighted with it. Retail $500 (!). I curently have it on my preamp (Joule Electra) but I'm getting another one for my CDP, and possibly my amps. (Hi Bob!) I haven't tried that many other cords (Coincident, Shunyata Black Mamba & King Cobra, Blue Circle), but now I don't feel I need to. BTW, I also use the Nordost interconnects.

So what does it sound like???? Very open, big soundtsage, huge, solid image... smooth, focused, transparent, no brightness or glare. Balanced. I don't have dedicated lines or a power conditioner. The SLVR is plugged straight into the wall of my crappy circa 1961 wiring. I didn't think a power cord would make this much difference considering my old house electrical system...but it most assuredly did.

You should email Bob and ask him anything you want...he really knows wire and he' a straight shooter. Try him at rcrump@houston.rr.com and he'll hook you up with a local dealer.

The SLVR does take 30 days to completely break-in. Sorry if you don't believe in break-in, but it's true. This cord performed *exactly* as Bob told me it would.

My system: Cary 303 CDp, Accuphase T109 tuner, Joule Electra LA100 MkIII preamp, Meitner MTR101 MkII mono amps, Alon V MkII speakers, Nordost Quattro Fil ICs, Coincident tri-wire speaker cables.

I just want to reiterate Avguy's advice. Don't accept anyone's recommendation of a single cord without trying some others.

I keep a decent quantity of four different brands of power cables around, simply because they all sound different (not necessarily better or worse) from each other.

To give you an example - I was helping a friend put a system together and we had a Res Audio CD50 driving a Plinius 8200P driving Thiel 1.5 speakers. With this combination, power cord (let's call it A) sounded much better than cord B, and we wondered why anyone would ever buy cord B since it sounded so bad compared with A.

Once the system ran in we decided the stage size and weight were not quite what we wanted so we inserted a Plinius CD-LAD into the system and it took off (ie we heard it, and it was good). But the sound was not quite balanced so we tried a few things and eventually ended up using power cord B, and wondered why anyone would buy cord A since B sounded so much better.

Mark: Just wondering if you ever did any experimenting with the OTA wire as a power cord? I've been using a DIY OTA power cord on my CD player (can't really imagine anyone using such a thing with amps as described in the OTA thread) with very good results for the past few months. I don't have any experience with the megabuck cords, but the OTA replaced a pretty decent cord (IMO) that retails around the $350 mark.

The points made by AVGuy and RedKiwi are well taken. As a general rule, I never buy anything for my system without listening to it first in my system. Nonetheless, these forums are excellent places to get starting points for items to audition and a good complement to magazine reviews.

To that end, I just completed my audition of the new Shunyata Python and I am sad to report that it did not work well in my system. There was a distinct loss in soundstage and overall the sound was muffled with both my Wadia 850 and Pass X-150. To my ear, I liked the sound of the S/R A/C Master Coupler better and it is about a fifth of the price. Given my success with other X-Series S/R products, I think I will audition the new S/R Res. Ref. (X Series) power cord.