Best Male & IEC plug for high current power cords?


What are the the best, most cost-effective MALE and IEC plugs for use in high current power cords, with tubes and with SS power amps? Detail, dynamics, balance and BLACK background! No hash or sibilance! ... Copper? Gold? Rhodium? Silver? ... Furutech? Oyaide? Wattgate? ... And the wires, shielded or unshielded?
pmboyd

Showing 12 responses by pmboyd

Rja, I just don't want the softening effect of gold plating on my power pcs. I like it for my dac. Good point about the Ohno IEC. I'll look into it. BTW, I just posted a thread on the advisability of mixing metals on pc terminations, ie. gold on on end (male or iec), copper on the other.
But what effect do the flavors -- copper, silver, gold, rhodium -- have on the sound? And how well do they mate with different materials, for instance, copper wire and silver plugs, or silver wire and gold plugs, etc?
Cable Asylum's a good resource... IF one has the time to wade through. I'm hoping someone can summarize so I don't have to. Besides recommendations for power amp cords, I'd appreciate recommendations for source cords -- in particular, a transport cord (CEC). I'm currently using an Audience 'e' on my transport and a standard Audience Power Chord on my Preamp.
Thanks for the input everybody! I found my plugs: Neotech.
Outstanding construction and solid OFC copper conductors -- $50 each through partsconnection.com.
New information about gold plugs. Just got a Black Sands Violet 1 power cord with gold-plated plugs to compare to my BS Violet 1 with copper plugs. The former imparts an mistakenly warmer sound, but seemingly at the expense of clarity. "Voices" seem as though they're coming through a soft cotton scrim. I prefer the neutrality of the copper plugs. CAVEAT: Perhaps I haven't burned in the gold long enough... I'll report back later.
Postscript to the former post: this is my finding when used on my tube dac, not my monoblocks. I'll report back on the difference between the cords on my transport and preamp as well.
I've not seen the FIM at less than $70/ea, and they're gold plated. I don't want gold-plated plugs on my amp cords. If there were copper FIMs, I'd probably choose them; I like their products. I've seen the Furutechs but I haven't seen the Neotechs. Same price. Hmmmm.
My understanding is that, notwithstanding the lesser build quality of the Neotech plugs, their conductors are made entirely of Ohno OCC copper, a higher grade than is used in the Furutech F1-11.
Update: outside of this forum I just talked to two people, dedicated DIYers, who did a heads-up comparison of the Neotech and Furutech plugs, both of whom found the Neotech to be sonically superior. Neotech copper male and iec, ditto Furutech (F1-11), all else held constant, in a power amp application.
Rja, You're absolutely right about the component iecs. That's my next step. Thanks.
Violet ZII with gold-plated Furutech plugs has finally fully broken in and it works wonders with taming the digititus of my solid state gear but it's not as focused as I'd like with my tube system. It maintains excellent detail with solid state and is wonderfully liquid. I think a standard Violet will be just the ticket for the tube set-up!