Tweakers' Asylum

Posted by HumanMedia (A) on May 26, 2007 at 17:45:45

In Reply to: RE: 193L choke impressions posted by John Swenson on May 26, 2007 at 14:51:49

Ive just installed and burned in a 193M choke (took it up a notch cause Im in 240V land).

For those asking on how to install, this is what I did to give me maximum flexibility.

The choke has two leads. I wired them into a chassis mountable IEC socket that had screw-in connectors (longer lead to hot, shorter to neutral). I also added a ground wire to the choke by tightly wrapping one end around one of the ends of the chassis bolts and secured it tightly by adding another nut of the same gauge. I wrapped this new ground wire down and under the chassis so it came out parallel to the other two lead and secured this to the ground pin of the IEC. I wrapped the wires in tech flex and heatshrinked the ends. I then put a rectangle of adhesive acoustic rubber foam sheeting to the underside of the choke to hold all of the wires in place and to acoustically isolate the choke from the floor where it sits.

So now I have a choke with a small 'tail' of cable terminated with an IEC. This allows me to plug in any power cable so that I can move it around between sockets to try it out.

For the first hour of use there was a major bass hump. In fact all bass sounded like the same frequency. Over the night the bass evened out to be accentuated across all of the bass range, still way too much. Buried in there the high frequencies and mids definitely seemed nicer smoother and more forward without being unpleasant. I knew it took a week to settle in. So let it settle in, I did.

It took 10 days to stabilise/burn-in. The bass has subsided and the whole presentation is more neutral with nicer mid range and highs with a hint of the new choke warmth remaining. For me it wasnt revelatory like for some, but it was definitely an improvement.

As discussed elsewhere the addition of a 1A slow blow fuse on the hot lead is a very good idea, which I might implement when I find the best socket for it and I take the IEC off and wire it directly into a power cord.