A couple of posts ago I told you about my adventure of building up an AC power cord with the Western Electric WE16GA and trying it out on my Mhdt Havana USB DAC.
It takes a while for the Western Electric WE16GA to settle down, but I thought my newly constructed WE16GA power cord sounded promising, and when it finally settled down completely, I thought it sounded really good in typical Western Electric fashion of being rich, colorful, dynamic, nicely textured, and very musical.
My WE16GA power cord experiment was not as good as Mark Coles' superb Sablon Audio Gran Corona power cord that I normally use on the Havana, but it was good in its own right.
As I said in that earlier post, the WE16GA power cord I made was a test run to see how well suited it might be for using as hard-wired power cords on my vintage McIntosh MC30 monaural amplifiers, which incidentally, were originally wired internally with Western Electric wire by McIntosh.
Now that I had a 'green light' on the WE16GA, it was time to give it a try on the MC30s as hard-wired power cords. I pulled one of my MC30s out of the system, removed the bottom cover, and set to work.
The MC30 with the bottom off. Check out all those gorgeous 'Real Sound' mods from the Capacitor Adventure with Yazaki-san.
In the photo below you can see the hard-wired power cord coming in from the left side, with the black (neutral) wired to a tab on the fuse holder, and the white (live) to another tab that you can see below it.
That's the power cord coming in from the left. Note the multi-colored original Western Electric wire below it.
I got out the Furutech FI-11M connectors, attached the Western Electric WE16GA wires to their appropriate connections inside the plug, and tightened everything down.
Furutech FI-11M AC connector.
Attaching the WE16GA inside the Furutech plug end.
Furutech plug body in place and everything tightened down.
Then I soldered the neutral and live wires to their appropriate tabs inside the MC30's chassis.
WE16GA wired into the MC30.
Then I buttoned everything back up and admired my handiwork.
Vintage McIntosh MC30 with newly hardwired WE16GA power cord.
I placed the completed MC30 into the system and hooked it up so I could give it a listen before starting on the second one, just in case, as it would be a pain to undo it if the WE16GA didn't work out.
Hooking up the MC30 monaural amplifier.
I gave the first MC30 a listen and it sounded a lot like when I put the WE16GA power cable on the Havana, promising, but a little rough.
However, my impressions were good enough that I repeated the process of installing a hard-wired WE16GA power cord into my second MC30 monaural amplifier.
The newly hardwired WE16GA MC30s ready to go!
I then installed both MC30s into the system, plugged them in, and gave them a listen.
First up was Neil Young's superb Live At The Cellar Door album.
The WE16GA hard-wired MC30s sounded promising, but a little brash & spitty in the highs. Like before with the Havana, it sounds like the Western Electric WE16GA is going to need a little time to settle down.
I'll report back when it does and let you know the final verdict.
