Quite a long time ago now, our friend Yazaki-san had recommended the Marinco hospital plugs to me as a good sounding affordable plug, and I thought I'd pair a set of the Marinco's with the new 600V Duelund DCA12GA tinned-copper cable (link HERE) that is intended for building power cables, and see what kind of results I could get from an affordable AC power cable.
The new 600VDC Duelund DCA12GA tinned-copper tone wire!
I ordered a Marinco 8215 NEMA Hospital-Grade Power Plug 15A 125V and a Marinco 320IEC15 15 Amp, 120 Volt, 2 Pole, 3 Wire, IEC 320 Connector set of plugs from Amazon, which cost me a little less than $40 USD with taxes (below).
The 600V Duelund DCA12GA tinned-copper cable is about $10 USD per meter at Parts ConneXion (HERE). So assuming you want to make a one-meter AC power cable, you can do it for well under $100 USD for the total parts cost of the DCA12GA plus Marinco plugs.
Marinco AC plugs
The Marinco's aren't nearly as impressive in fit, finish, and materials quality as the spendy NCF(R) Piezo Ceramic Series of Furutech AC plugs, the FI-50M NCF(R) and the FI-50 NCF(R) IEC plugs (about $750 or so for a set) that are used on the exotic, expensive, and ultra-high-performing Acoustic Revive statement Absolute Power Cables, but for about $40 USD they look pretty good. But of course the true test of their mettle will be in the listening.
Furutech FI-50 NCF(R) IEC plug
Furutech FI-50M NCF(R) AC plug
As you might know, I've been using runs of the 600V Duelund DCA12GA tinned-copper cable as speaker cables on my "Stokowski" Altec's to get a handle on their sonic performance, and they have compared well to the signal version of the DCA12GA.
While I think the regular Duelund DCA12GA tinned-copper cable with their baked oil-soaked cotton casing sound better for speaker cables than the 600V Duelund DCA12GA tinned-copper cable, the 600V Duelund DCA12GA tinned-copper cable sounds quite good in its own right.
The Duelund DCA12GA tinned-copper cables are definitely one my all-time favorite speaker cables at any price, and the fact that they are affordable is icing on the cake.
As soon as I get some time set aside to do it, I'll wire up an AC power cable with the Marinco AC plugs and the 600V Duelund DCA12GA, and tell you all about how I did it.
After it's complete, I'll then tell you about my initial listening impressions of its performance, and follow that up with my impressions after it has had a chance to fully run-in.
We'll see how close a Duelund-Marinco power cable comes to the lofty performance level of the Acoustic Revive and Sablon Audio power cables that I use for references.
Stay tuned for more!
As always, thanks for stopping by, and may the tone be with you!
