I did some DIY power cable experimentation earlier this year. In particular, I tried using plugs and sockets plated with different metals - silver, gold and rhodium. Each had a dramatic but quite different effect on the sound. In the end I settled for good quality gold-plated UK plugs and IECs from Furutech. I particularly like the Furutech UK plug because it can accept two cores per channel of 2.5mm T&E.
Yep, you read that right
My power cables consist of twisted twin runs of 2.5mm T&E. This is equivalent to the household ring main and effectively extends the ring to the kit. It's quite hard to twist the two runs together but worth the effort for the interference rejection that this gives.
They will need a good 50 hours break-in at least.
I haven't experimented with any additional shielding so don't know if this would be better still but I sold my fancy (and expensive) after market power cables after testing against these.
I also use ProGold to get the last ounce of performance from the gold-plated contacts.
For 2 Furutech UK plugs (gold plated) and 2 Furutech IEC plugs (gold plated) I paid a total of £190. The T&E was about a tenner.
Another advantage of this design is that if I move house and need longer cables I can just go down to the DIY store for twenty quid's worth of T&E and re-use my fancy plugs
Edit: I also replaced the wall socket with a switchless model. It makes a small difference but costs peanuts so why not.
