Interesting and a strange thread.
The power cord issue, well everyone has been burn't or tried a product that didn't live up the claims of the manufacturer. Also there is the question of importance you place on a gain. For some people $180 is too much money for such a small gain. It is my personal belief the single thing that any one of us can do to improve our tone is to practise more. Costs nothing too. I don't recall ever reading an article where Robert Johnson used a titianium bridge on his guitar.
The question I ask myself is the power cord and better than an inlet filter?
http://www.schaffner.com/components/en/ ... uage_id=12
I haven't read the white paper and I won't read the white paper on this product as I don't have the test equipment to prove or disprove it. I would simply be reading the paper with a view to agree with it or disagree with it, so whats the point?
Basically Dave thinks it a good thing and Dana disagrees, really who is to say who is correct, it's all a matter of perception. I have been down this path where the differences between two different components was so fine that I couldn't tell whether I played the test line every so slightly different or there was a difference between components.
Myself I'd buy the line filter and not worry about the cord, but there isn't a lot of science behind that decision. As far as RF in a Trainwreck goes, on omission in the Express/Liverpool power supply is snubber caps across the rectifier diodes, this is a source of RF in the power supply. Many people do tend to stick with the original 1N4007 diodes as the RF frequencies will never make it through the output transformer and are way above the speakers response range. Still there isn't much cost involved in a handful of caps or UF4007 diodes.
Okay while I'm being opinionated, I think Dave is dead on the money about KF and wire. The reason I believed KF used solid core wire is that it stays where you bend it, and you don't have to hot glue the wires in place. A thing to remember about the Trainwreck amps, these things are not rocket science, KF wasn't working for NASA on the side.
What did Ken really do?
He built a clone of an AC-30 his way, and he built many variations on one amp topology, thats not to say these weren't great amps. What I'm saying is this we are all human and some of the conclusions Ken came to weren't always correct, lets face it I don't ever recall Ken mentioning the use of high end test equipment in developing his designs, and if you really wanted to know the harmonic content of your amp, you can't do that with out a spectrum analyzer (this tells you the harmonic being produced and the amplitude of these harmonics.)
Okay this is my two cents on the matter. Of course I could be wrong.
