Has anyone tried to replace the powercord on the 1050? One with a ground etc? I know alot of tweakers are big on replacing power cords.

True enough. A lot are big on it.

Here's food for thought - what are they going to do about the 20+ feet of 'bad' wire in the wall? How about the miles of wire between them and the substation? Or the run from the hydro plant to the substation?

And the engineering view - the PS on the equipment shouldn't care, if it does buy better equipment.

Just YMMV and IMO.

Well I used to think that also. However I have replaced several IEC power cords with stouter DIY cables and I have noticed a difference. I will not replace the captive power cord on my 1050 until it is out of warranty however.

Swap that power cord if you must, but you are deluding yourself if you think that replacing 6 feet of power cord at the end of miles of power transmission grid and a pole step down transformer is going to make a difference. The only argument I can even imagine for this is that a certain power cord may filter RF interferrence to some extent, but equipment is generally aready pretty robust in this respect, and in any event a good power line filter will do a much better job.

I could belive it would make a difference if the power cord was connecting your 1050/950/770/whatever to a high-quality power conditioner... othewise I buy into Charlie's view. If you're not going to use a conditioner or a balancec power supply or whatnot, then don't bother.

As to whether or not balanced power supplies and power conditioners make a difference... well, I'm reserving judgement on that one. :-) I can believe that it could, but have no evidence to back that up.

I'm also curious about what adding a ground pole would do, especially if it's not connected to anything at the 1050 side of the cord.

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Matthew J. Hill
matt@idsi.net

Having a ground connection to the 1050s chassis is not going to buy anything except some extra safety in the remote chance that AC potential makes it's way to the chassis.

Balanced power is good for canceling out any common mode crud that is picked up on the power lines. To take best advantage of it though, the hot setup would be to use the balanced 220 VAC feed from the power pole and step it down to 120 VAC in the balanced power transformer, keeping it balanced. Then there would be common mode rejection benefit all the way back to the power pole transformer, and possibly beyond that.

To me the best way to get the most from your electricity is to run an isolated circuit and ground to the recepticle. Not only that, but if your house is like mine and is piped, you will want to make a seperate home run from the panel to the 1900 box, if your house is roped you should be ok. Line condintioners arent that bad, although in my 12 years as an elecrician, I still don't see any real improvments in performance, unless the house was'nt wired properlly. Another thing you might want to do is check out the load calcs on your panel and check to see if it were properlly phased when the breakers were installed. This is one of the biggest problems I have seen. Soundhounds transformer step down would be a great thing, unfortunately your house wouldnt function so well electricly that is. I say save the cash on the cord and get a qualified electrician to check out the wiring of your house.

A line conditioner is good for filtering out RFI and EMI, in addition, most will provide for isolation of components from each other. The benefits of this are not always needed, but the surge protection that's built into them can save big bucks when there's a nearby lighting strike.

To use 220VAC balanced power, you would have to have a dedicated outlet to plug your stepdown transformer into. I don't know the electrical codes governing this, but if I needed such a setup, I would do it regardless of the codes. "I Don't Need No Stink'in Codes!!"

[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited January 03, 2003).]