Furutech Discussion

I also find Rhodium and naim being good partners. I mean, naim could have chose whatever material on the EU Schuko but chose Rhodium version since they found it sounded the best.

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Depends on the age of the Powerline. The early Powerlines used the most basic Furutech with brass pins.

In fact, I have a bunch of Powerlines, the newest being 4 years old, and they are all basic brass pinned Furutech plugs.

EU Schuko? Never seen that. Picture? I know US and UK use different materials and connectors but EU schuko as far as I have seen has always been Rhodium with the difference of transparent and black housing.

I tried to do something similar for my system by getting 3 short MCRU No. 75 EU Schuko Power Cords.

Unfortunately the result was unlistenable… :scream:
Then again my system is not exactly lower end hifi. :innocent:
So finally ended up with full PowerLines and a WireWorld Matrix power block.

I’m pretty sure the EU versions have always been rhodium. I have both older and newer - different housings (one black, the other clear) but both rhodium.

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https://6moons.com/audioreviews/naim2/powerline.html

Is an export PowerLine inferior to a UK PowerLine since it benefits from only one Naim connector, the IEC?

All I can say is that the UK plugs available to us were degrading the performance of the PowerLine and this directed us towards designing our own UK mains plug. The plug we have designed is a big step up from the rest. The plugs we have found for the PowerLine versions for the non-UK markets were selected in listening tests from the well-designed ones available. The selected plugs made the rest-of-world PowerLine leads perform at a similar level to the UK version. It is so difficult to do a fair and unbiased comparison so I wouldn’t be able to say whether the UK or non-UK versions of the PowerLine was better and of course in the end, the customer can’t choose. I would like to think the UK plug is at least slightly better after we have spent so much time and effort on the design, although the big benefit you have in Europe is the lack of fuse directly in the mains plug.

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I have a Furutech FI-1363-N1 plug on my power distribution board cable.
Its the L-Shape (90 degree angled) to facilitate the cable hanging down correctly & not stressing the 13A plug/wall socket connection as the straight out types do.

I have to say these Furutech plugs are so well designed, ABS body/housing with (plating aside) Furutech Copper alloy internal conductors. A big plus IMO is the wire connection method, these are not the ubiquitous basic screw down type that can crush & damage the wire(s)
(guilty as charged with the Powerline 13A plug)
Furutech have clamp type wire contacts that sandwhich the wire between stationary contact plates.

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Yes it’s definitely possible that this change was US plugs only.

@Mike-B The only thing to really be careful of is that the mains sockets only support 8.2mm as the thickest wire in. Though I installed mine with 8.2mm wire and it looks as though 10mm might just go in if you were really forceful. 8.2mm didn’t exactly slide in with ease though even with the clamp fully open.

Hi F_Z, I’m talking about the FI-1363-N1 plug.
It has 4mm/2 H07RN-F wire connected.

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I got that. I just meant in the broader context of the Furutech thread and your comment about the good design of the stuff, one might want to be careful before going crazy and having 10mm solid core wiring installed only to find out they couldn’t fit it on a wall socket.

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One issue I’ve had with several is that these screws fail quite often?
Also a bit tricky to change fuse as often I need to take the earth wire out

Not a problem, no offense taken. I can see why you think Furutech might not be a good match, but as I explained its not that its not a good match in general, it’s that as you seem to be aware, your other component matching & room aren’t ideal & the FI-50 NCF’s are just revealing this. It is not a surprise that in your case you need to use cables as tone control to dial things back & add warmth.

Naim & Focal in the past by most were never considered a good match, it was only after Naim was bought by the same company as Focal that they started pairing them. After this happened, with the newer releases Focal seemed to dial back their speakers so they were a better match (but some still find them too aggressive in the upper end). This happened from the Sopra’s forward, so the 1000BE series for most would not be a good match. I have heard the BE series a number of times & can say even on a pricy, tube based Audio Research setup, they were still far to aggressive in the top end for me. Not to say their bad speakers, I did here the 1038’s probably close to 15 years back paried with some top flight kit, don;t recall 100% but it was some big tube mono amps, thinking Nagra & that combo sounded sublime. The 252/SCDR & 300DR would not doubt be an improvement over the 282/250DR but if you want to make a change, either the speakers or a different brand of electronics is probably a better option.

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For me one loom of the same mains cables has not really worked well but mixing and matching for different components and requirements very much so, also for “flavour” of sound

Saying Rhodium is harsh sounding, is a very generalized statement that while many audiophiles have wrongly come to that conclusion ( I can understand why as I too previously thought this), it simply isn’t true & there are a number of factors that can be at play for this. Think about this, a lot of the most expensive, best sounding, highest resolving/transparent systems use components with rhodium, if rhodium itself was harsh/bright/thin/lacked bass etc, these types of systems would sound terrible, so its simply not true.

This applies to gold coating as well, not all gold coating sounds the same, in general gold is regarded as coloured, it adds warmth to the system. Typically people add lots of gold to cover up other issues, I too did this in the past. Problem is gold tends to mask details, I believe it’s to do with the thickness of gold coating that Furutech uses (they use thick coatings of all their metals), but their gold coating add a lot of warmth, at the expense of details, this also limits dynamics & may have a fuller sounding bass but its more bloated & slow sounding, with far less articulation & doesn’t go as deep. I’ll follow up with some of my experience from swapping from gold to rhodium in a further post, to try & keep this from becoming too long.

As for why Rhodium gets a bad wrap (there is lots of excellent info on the whatsbestforums with some very knowledgeable & experienced posters there that have lots of posts as to why but to sumerize):

First, as I said not all rhodium sounds the same, different manufactures sound different as do different models in the Furutech line itself. The FI-28, 48NCF R & 50NCF R all use the same base metal & plating but they all sound different. In comparison to gold, rhodium seems to be far more revealing of the base metal its plated over, so only use rhodium if its over a pure copper base metal nothing with brass or phosphor bronze as it’ll likely sound harsh. Next you need to match like for like metals on the same connection. This is not to say you can’t have gold on one end of the cord & rhodium on the other, but if your plugging into a gold outlet, the matching plug should also be gold. Sometimes its the differences in metals that causing the harshness. For eg, if you have a rhodium outlet & rhodium plug & swapped to a gold plug, this may actually introduce a harshness. Its hard for most to do, but if your using all gold & swap to one rhodium plug & notice brightness, you’d blame the rhodium but what you probably need to do is add more rhodium so the plating’s making contact match (seems counterintuitive to add more of what seems to be adding harshness).

I’ll get into it further details in a later post, but as in most things audio its all about matching. Rhodium is generally more transparent & neutral sounding vs gold. So depending on the system & depending on which rhodium ends your using, many would want to use a bulk cable that’s on the warmer side (with how much warmth you want to add system dependent). This way you get the resolution/transparency of rhodium while still not giving up too much warmth if required.

Burn in with rhodium (at least for Furutech) is also something that needs to be mentioned, you do have to have patient as it takes extremely long. I was going to talk about my finding with this as well, with first adding some context as if I don’t many will think I’m crazy (& I don’t blame them as I was always suspicious of these types of claim in the past )

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Ryder, was going to get into this as well, the DPS4.1/FI-50 NCF R combo is extremely expensive as a DIY cord but it is outstanding. I’ll go into further details later on, but what I can say is typically when you get to a certain quality of copper wire, many will say its actually the ends themselves that have a bigger impact on sound (which aligns with what I have found over the years). So if you don’t want to go all out, take the cord you have & change one of the ends from the 28 series to the FI-50 NCF R, ideally add a male end plugged into a GTXD NCF R outlet & this should give you a good idea of what type of impact this type of upgrade will bring.

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@daren_p how about this, I’ll buy the recquisite parts and I’ll hire you to put them together for me! LOL Do you offer free shipping? :wink:

I’ve route the E wire over to the side to facilitate fuse access, but why do you ‘often’ need to change the fuse?

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If you were local, I’d probably be up for it. IIRC you said you were in the US? If so search Furutech on USaudiomart or Audiogon, there are usually posters on there that will assemble Furutech parts.

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Yes I’m your Southern neighbor. Thanks for the tip about Audiomart and gon. I’m not quite there yet to have custom power cables (must first walk before running) but in time I will be.

Thanks for your advice. If I change speakers then I will not continue Focal anymore. Actually it’s very difficult to make Focal speakers to sound fabulous. There is joke I hear that even the staff of Focal don’t know which amps are the best for their speakers. After years adjustment, I am more or less satisfied with the sound of my system now. And therein I have learned also very much. For Nargra, they are just out of my range. But maybe in the future I will give them a try.