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Reprinted with permission from JazzTimes
Aug. 2000 issue - Article by Chip Stern (Gearhead) titled
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Darkness on the Edge of Tone or Do Jazz Guitarists Know How Bad They Really Sound?
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... “But then you could make your current rig sound way more hi-fi and articulate if you’d just pay more attention to the signal chain: how you plug into the house current, and how you interface with your amp. It’s amazing how much a grungy electric matrix and cheap cable can veil your sound. As an experiment, I had a jazz guitar friend come over with his rig, and we listened to his customary rig, then kicked it up a notch... Employing tried and true technology from the world of high-end audio, these tweaks can confer a level of enhanced resolution, timbral accuracy, inner detail, harmonic complexity and dynamic that is shocking. The cheap guitar cables we’ve grown accustomed to over the years compress the amplified sound of your instrument...
...the look on my friends face when I unplugged his amp and the Blue Angel from the JPS Outlet Center and went direct to my wall socket. His jaw dropped as the soundstage collapsed, and his guitar signal grew appreciably boxier, with less detail, openness, and extension. “It’s so depressing,” he moaned, in dull disbelief. “We just went back to mono.”
The JPS Power AC Outlet Center is essentially an eight-gauge custom power cord with large conductors and sophisticated shielding, designed to handle the immense, instantaneous current demands of amplifiers. It comes in any length, though 2 meters is standard. Unlike a regular custom power cord, with a male outlet and female IEC inlet, this cord terminates in a hospital grade four-outlet box, so you can plug in any of your hard-wired amps or electronic gear. This is
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customary aural protocol in high-end audio. Rated at over 40 amps continuous current, the Power AC’s Optimized Field Matrix (O.F.M) design has just as profound an effect on the
synergy between you, your amp and
your guitar. When you clean up the grungy matrix of wall current, filter out all sorts of noise and run RF interference to ground, it’s as if your amp was suffering from tuberculosis, and suddenly all of the sonic congestion is gone. Dynamic range is vastly increased; the rise time of the individual notes is smoother and more natural; the speed and attack of transients is faster; there’s way more distinction between individual notes, between soft and hard touches; bass response is
more extended, mids and
highs are more open and transparent. Take it out of the signal chain, and everything seems more closed in and sluggish without it. In tandem with a hires cable, the Power AC Outlet Center offers guitarists an uncommon degree of resolution, detail and spatial dimension, even from a single mono source. And when your guitar rig isn’t plugged in, run all of your audio equipment through it, and hear your stereo soundstage open up like an arch
proscenium.
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