DIY Mains Lead

Made up two DIY mains cables today to replace some Naim PowerLineLites.

Got some;

• Belden Mains Power Cable “New 19364 – 83803 Combined Design”
• Braided nylon sleeving (in black to tone down the red mains cable)
• IEC C13 heavy duty (for larger diameter mains cable, up to 6mm2)
• Re-used the Naim Type G plugs, (as I liked the floating cable retainer

The original mains lead had a cross section of 0.75mm2, whereas the Belden cable has a cross section of 2.5mm2, so a bit bigger.

All went together well. However, getting the cable to fit the plug was a bit of a struggle, but got there in the end, by careful manipulation of the routing of the cable.

They’ve been installed for a few hours now and have noticed a difference. They appear to be louder, with more detail for both the bass and treble, noticed some cymbals that I hadn’t really heard before. Slightly brash in some areas, but I’ll let them burn in for a number of hours and see what happens.

Might keep an eye out for some heavy duty type G plugs for larger diameter mains cable to give a bit more space in the actual plug. Any one used some larger plugs, which they can recommend.

If it doesn’t work out, I’ll have to resort to Plan B and buy some ready made cables.

In the meantime, I’ll just have some fun listening to the Jazz

DG….

 

Found some larger capacity plugs, the MS HD 238s.

Ordered these with a Rhodium plating, which can take a cable with an external diameter of 17mm plus a cable cross section of 6mm2, so should be plenty of space.

Seen these in use by The Chord Company on their top end cables, so if good enough for them…

I’ll update further once I’ve received, fitted and done the burn in.

In the meantime, the brashness I mentioned previously has gone and the cables are settling down nicely.

DG…

 

The new MS HD 238 plugs have arrived.

The existing cables had settled down nicely, so now to see what the new plugs sound like.

Changed them over today. They have a very firm cable connection system which is good. They accept an external cable diameter of up to 16 mm and a cable size of 4 mm2.

They appear to be fairly substantial and easy to wire up with the larger diameter cable, which was nice.

Shouldn’t take too long to burn in as the cables have been running for about a week now.

DG…