Chord Sarum T Power Cable

The objection arrives before the cable is out of the box: the electricity has travelled two hundred miles from a power station through overhead lines, a substation, whatever the previous owner of your house had a man in to install, and forty metres of grey twin-and-earth under the floorboards. How can the last metre matter?

It is a good objection and it answers the wrong question. Nobody sensible claims a mains cable cleans up the grid. What the last metre does is different. It is the section running through your listening room, alongside interconnects and loudspeaker cable, acting as an aerial for airborne interference and as a conduit for noise passing between components sharing a mains block. A shielded cable is not improving your electricity supply. It is limiting what gets in, and what gets out.

The Chord Company describe the Sarum T power cable as the complement to their Sarum T signal cables, built with high-grade materials and shielding, with Taylon® applied to the internal elements.

Connector options, and why you need to check

This is the Sarum T product with real ordering decisions attached, so read this bit before you buy. Chord fit high-specification IEC connectors in 10 amp or 16 amp forms, or Fig8 for equipment with a two-pin inlet, and pair them with UK, Euro, US or Australian mains plugs. The 16 amp inlet is the one people miss — it is fitted to a number of larger power amplifiers and it will not accept a standard 10 amp cable. Look at the socket on the back of the component before you order, or send us a photograph and we will identify it.

Standard lengths are 1m, 1.5m and 2m, with custom lengths and terminations made to order.

Technical Specifications

Chord do not publish conductor gauge, shielding construction or capacitance figures for this cable, so they are not listed here.

Who Is It For?

Owners of a Sarum T signal cable or two who have reached the point of asking what is left. The conventional wisdom is to fit the best mains cable to the source or the preamplifier first, on the grounds that noise picked up early is amplified along with everything else — though power amplifiers, which draw the most current and sit closest to the loudspeakers, make their own case. If you have several components and one budget, we will give you an opinion rather than a shrug.

It is not the place to start. A system whose interconnects are still the ones that came in the box has cheaper improvements available, and we would rather sell you those first. The Sarum T Analogue RCA is the usual entry to the range, and the whole of it is on our Chord Company collection page.

Buying from Martins Hi-Fi

If a mains cable is something you want to try, our home evaluation service covers it, and listening at home is the only sensible way to judge one. Listen for the noise floor rather than for a tonal change — a quieter background behind a voice, decays running on a little longer before they go. Tell us the make and model of the component it is going on and the IEC fitting can be confirmed before anything is ordered.

When you get in touch, you'll be speaking with Dave, Chris and Tim at info@martinshifi.co.uk, call 01603 627010, or WhatsApp on 07554 687137. You can read more about how we work on our Why Martins page. We are at 85–91 Ber Street, Norwich, NR1 3EY.