Power Cord Design

[Loquah]

I have wanted to try the Bottlehead power cord kit for ages and finally decided to go ahead and buy local parts (for Australian power supply) and make some cables based on Bottlehead's designs.

Sourcing the plugs, etc. is fine of course, but the cable is a little trickier. The nearest I have found to the Bottlehead recommended 20AWG multi-strand copper cable is 18AWG multi-strand tinned copper cable.

Do you think the extra thickness and pre-tinning of the strands would negatively effect the performance in any way?

[Doc B.]

Since the Bottlehead power cord was more or less an accident rather than a design development, it's pretty hard to say what any changes would do to the sound. The power was not developed through an extensive series of comparisons like the interconnect kit. All that said I would guess you will come out pretty close with the parts you describe. I would guess that the tinning would have a larger impact on the sound than the wire gauge in terms of the cord sounding different than the BH cord.

[Grainger49]

IIRC Australia is on 240V so the current should be about half of what we run our Bottlehead products here.  Just saying you will have more headroom using the gauges that were used here. 

Of course, I know that you probably use a metric circular wire there also.  I can't imagine Australia using American Wire Gauge (AWG).

[mcandmar]

/somewhat related question.  In the 240v world how many amps does the S.E.X. amp require?

Reason i ask is i just made up a power cable and need to know what fuse rating to put into the plug. Would a 3amp be sufficient?

[Paul Birkeland]

3A will be a little on the high side for the SEX amp.  On a 240V line, 0.5A-1A will work nicely.  (You have a fuse in the power cord?)

[Loquah]

IIRC Australia is on 240V so the current should be about half of what we run our Bottlehead products here.  Just saying you will have more headroom using the gauges that were used here. 

Of course, I know that you probably use a metric circular wire there also.  I can't imagine Australia using American Wire Gauge (AWG).

Not entirely relevant to the overall topic, but the local electronics shop sells cable measured in AWG. Maybe it's manufactured predominantly for the US? Either way, it sounds like this stuff might be worth a go. I'll report back once the plugs arrive from Hong Kong.

[mcandmar]

3A will be a little on the high side for the SEX amp.  On a 240V line, 0.5A-1A will work nicely.  (You have a fuse in the power cord?)

Perfect thank you.

All UK style plugs have a fuse built in, though that means fuses are usually doubled up as almost all appliances these days have a fuse built in.  We also have three pin plugs similar to Australia with a dedicated earth pin.  The thought of only having two pins and no fuse just scares me.

My favorite plug socket has to be Denmark, doesn't that just make you smile 

(https://forum.bottlehead.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Finternationalconfig.com%2Fprod_shot%2F78117.jpg&hash=43361831bad74e0ec6e29233af977df11423e2a0)

and their "Hospital Grade" version..

(https://forum.bottlehead.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Finternationalconfig.com%2Fprod_shot%2F78117-HG.jpg&hash=fa1a84606bb06bf772ef4775757431c530f2fe38)

[Paul Birkeland]

I like South Africa's outlets.  They are all 240V/35A.  They are also not recessed at all, so as you're plugging a cord in, the live pins are pretty easily touched.  To remedy this, every outlet has a switch on it for safety considerations...