I have replaced all my power leads with Music Works IEC's and a Power Block to great effect.

However, my IXO is a captive lead, anyone out there tried replacing a captive lead with Music Works or other's, is this a good/bad idea, the guys at Audio Counsel where a bit hesitant as it is an unknown to them...

Additionally what about disconnecting the on/off switch on the IXO, i tried this on my Micromega sources with great effect...

naheed...

Naheed,

removing the mains switch may sound like a good idea, but I think it's short-sighted.

How are you going to power the system up?

It is never a good idea to plug a live mains lead into a switched-on appliance - you can get funny surges, and Naim kit really does not like surges up the neutral power line (ref JV on old conference).

Even if you've got a switched mains socket (I bet you haven't, given this question) then you will have to switch everything on all at once - against the advice in the manual to switch on the power amp(s) last. At the very least this will give you a big thump through your speakers, and this is never a good idea.

(For info, my dealer reckons that a single loud squeal from plugging a phono socket into the live source on a preamp is sufficient to deteriorate the tweeters on your speakers).

Although this may sound better in the short term, I would worry that in two or three years you may have unnecessarily stressed your electronics or speakers and be getting a sound which is less than it might otherwise be.

Be careful.

Have a happy New Year, Martin

Martin, the Dist Block i use is switched, so i could switch off just the IXO.

naheed...

Hi again Naheed

Yeah - my 3.5 has a captive lead, and now has a kimber chord. Had to get a little drunk to cut the wire* and install a female IEC connector for the new lead. Biggest difficultly I found was trying to decide how much of the old cable to leave - too much surely means less benefit from the new cable, too little means if you screw up cable stripping you have very little left to trim and try again. My answer was 1.5 inches.

Clearly the other choice is to open up the box and re-wire ..mucking about with both the equipment and the cable. I decided not to go anywhere near....

Jonathan

(* - A friend who recommended the chnage had done exactly the same.)

Hi Jonathan,

I was thinking of using the Music Works as a captive lead (open up the box and re-wire), as i intend keeping the IXO for a while... but at the sametime disconnecting the power switch.

naheed...

Naheed

As I'm sure you're aware, as a fellow recipient of "The World Accoring to Russ" every few months, the kimber cable I use is like is a serious multi-stranded / interwoven malarky - and the thought of trying to replace the naim lead with that by opening up the case and re-wiring made me very nervous. If the musicworks leads are less fiddly it sounds sensible.

If you have another power-off switch available - bypassing the switch on the box should give an improvement, clearly, unless Naim have in some way 'balanced' the circuit to operate optimally with the switch in place and you spoil this. Unlikely I would have thought.

I'd still be concerned that I'd f**k something up. Just doing the IEC splicing mentioned above made me sweat ... what happens if I have to live without the music for a few weeks due to repair or replacement?

Oh the humanity.

Good luck

Jonathan

(PS I was thinking about trying living without the super-purifier thing for a couple of weeks after making some other changes, just as a further test - do you want to try it?)

In this interesting thread there is talk about changing mains leads, bypassing switches in mains blocks and even opening up Naim boxes and rewire the mains.

Only a little while back I was verbally stabbed to bleed, kicked at and mutilated to death when I talked about connecting the mains unearthed.

How funny....

Richard.

I reckon I'll do it, not me though as I'm to 'chicken', waiting to see if the boys at Audio Counsel will oblige...

Yes please, I don't mind giving the Super a whirl, email naheed@saddique.net me to sort the details.

naheed...

I just got a mailer-daemon failure for

naheed@saddique.net

do you want to try jonathan.ribee@distserv.boc.com

??

If that doesn't work I'll risk sticking my 'phone number on this site.

Cheers
Jonathan

Well, i took the plunge last friday to snip my IXOs todger OFF...

The whole thing had me rather worried, as even Audio Counsel were'nt too sure, it being an unknown.

In the end, i went with Jonathan's route, and snipped the cable leaving 3-4 inches, and wired up a female IEC to the end.

First three days, were a major worry, as it was very difficult to pin-point what had actually happened, but 3 days in things settled down allowing an early heads-up as to improvements.

Well its Day Four now and the improvement is considerable:

* More low level detail;
* That annoying little 'tiz' from vocals has gone;
* Bass is 'plumbier', deeper and more expressive;
* And that last bit of congestion, is all but gone.

It's still improving, but all i'll say in MY case it worked a treat, the guys at AC have done alot of R&D into this and it shows BIG TIME.

Naheed