Tacima CS929 6 Way Mains Filtering Block

[synsei]

A few days ago after much 'umm'ing and ah'ing' I decided I was not going to find a Belkin pf40 mains conditioner for anywhere near my budget so I began to look around for an affordable alternative. I discovered that this sector is mainly populated by extremely expensive high end equipment and subsequently I was beginning to lose the will to live. That was until I stumbled across a Tacima CS929 on eBay which was so cheap I initially dismissed it. After many more fruitless hours searching the net something drew me back to the eBay shop selling the Tacima product. The reason I'd dismissed it initially is due to the fact that it is a slightly posher looking 6 way mains extension block. I think I'd been seduced by the Belkin's rather attractive and hefty looking casement :mental: Anyway, I Google'd the Tacima and low and behold, I find 'What HiFi?' have given it a 5 star rating and there are many other cheery reports about the Tacima CS929 dotted all over t'internet. So, back to eBay I scurry and put an order in 'tout suite'.

The aforementioned article arrived by post this morning and I quickly set about unplugging and removing my old cheapo 10 way extension. I cleaned all the contacts, pins and fuses in the mains plugs and treated them with De-Oxit and then reconnected everything, switched all my kit back on and threw Rumer's Seasons Of My Soul into the Arcam. JESUS 'AITCH' JONES, it literally blew me away!!! Let me qualify that; I was expecting some improvement of course, or I wouldn't have bothered buying one, however I was not prepared for this. It is as big a step up as swapping out the Audiolab 8000c for the Classe Audio DR5 had been, and that's without using decent power leads, mine are all bog standard kettle leads, and old ones at that. Bass is as tight as a drum, imaging is pin sharp, mid-range is delightfully airy and the top end is sublime. If you are using standard mains blocks to power your kit and you are budget conscious, I urge you to ditch them and grab one or two of these Tacima's, it is an outstanding product :mex:

[Ammonite Audio]

I have one of these. It is now used as an extension block for the computer, in the hope of stopping the computer from polluting the house mains. If the Tacima works wonders for you, your previous mains setup must have been truly awful. Musically, IMO, the Tacima is awful.

[Alex_UK]

Dave - we've been around the block (sorry) a few times with the Tacima - most people (myself included) found that they were good for the money - but I did end up taking the amplifier back out and plugging directly into the mains again as it sounded better IMHO so worth trying that if you can be bothered. :)

[synsei]

Each to their own Shuggie, all I can report is what I'm hearing, and what I'm hearing is a vast improvement, and I mean in a 'night & day' stylie... :ner:

[synsei]

Yeah thanks Alex. I found Will's thread right after I posted mine :doh:, but in my defense Will didn't mention the Tacima in his thread title :lolsign:

I'll try swapping the Hafler out of the circuit tomorrow morning, can't do it now unless I want the neighbors playing along with the percussion on the walls :lolsign:

[Alex_UK]

Yeah thanks Alex. I found Will's thread right after I posted mine :doh:, but in my defense Will didn't mention the Tacima in his thread title :lolsign:

I'll try swapping the Hafler out of the circuit tomorrow morning, can't do it now unless I want the neighbors playing along with the percussion on the walls :lolsign:

:lolsign:

[icehockeyboy]

What you should have done is try your kit into the Tac BEFORE you did all the cleaning and De Oxit malarkey, that way you would know if it was down to the Tacima, the way you did it may mean it was better beacause of the cleaning........:eyebrows:

As it is, and I think I mentioned this somewhere else on the forum, I tried FAR more expensive blocks before buying a Tac, and for a tenth of the price of one of them< I am well pleased with it!

[MCRU]

30,000+ sold very year, they cannot be that bad can they!

[synsei]

What you should have done is try your kit into the Tac BEFORE you did all the cleaning and De Oxit malarkey, that way you would know if it was down to the Tacima, the way you did it may mean it was better beacause of the cleaning........:eyebrows:

As it is, and I think I mentioned this somewhere else on the forum, I tried FAR more expensive blocks before buying a Tac, and for a tenth of the price of one of them< I am well pleased with it!

You're right Craig. I did give this some thought beforehand but I'm ashamed to admit that some of the plugs and fuses attached to my kit were very old and dirty, especially the one attached to the Hafler which also showed evidence of severe arc pitting on the live pin. Needless to say I have replaced the damaged mains plug for a new one. The other plugs cleaned up a treat however. I came to the conclusion that I did not want to push dirty, damaged plugs straight into a brand new distribution block.

I'm awaiting a No.14 Mains Lead for the DR5 from Dave B which I'm hoping will arrive tomorrow (ordered on Friday last). If it proves to be a significant upgrade from the old PC lead I'm currently using (which I'm sure it will be), then I intend to purchase another for the CDP too. At some point I'd like to replace the hard wired mains lead for the Hafler but that is going to have to wait until I've bought a replacement Cap kit for it, which won't be available again until August due to the Sendai quake and Tsunami. :eyebrows:

[icehockeyboy]

I agree about not wanting to plug dodgy plugs/pins into a brand new mains block, but you could have plugged them back into your original one, and listened first to see if doing the cleaning made the improvement.

Mind you, so long as you are happy with the improvement, what difference does it make how it happened! :) I was just thinking along the guidelines of if you introduce two bits of "improvement devices" into your kit, do it one at a time to see where any improvement came from.

[WAD62]

Yeah thanks Alex. I found Will's thread right after I posted mine :doh:, but in my defense Will didn't mention the Tacima in his thread title :lolsign:
:

Hi Dave,

No thread motherhood here...;)

I've got 6 now, I should get some shares!

I know there are probably better quality options, but I doubt there's anything to touch them on value.

Like you I'm running everything, including the power amps through it, perhaps if one is using a class A amp there may be some choking issues, mine are A/B Audiolabs so I don't believe 'choking' is an issue for me. :)

[synsei]

Thanks Will ;)

I've now done a comparison test with the Hafler running from the Tac as well as straight from the wall and the results are conclusive, the Hafler sounds so much better when running through the Tac. To test for potential choking issues I seriously abused the volume control on the DR5 this morning with no apparent ill effects. In fact, the more I cranked it up the better it got... :wow:

[ursus262]

I got a major improvement in the sound quality after plugging my gear into my Tacima conditioner. I even plugged the TV into it, and noticed that the on-screen noise disappeared.

Also, I use deoxit sometime later, and noticed, again, a further improvement in the quality of sound and video.

[PELASGOS]

Damn!, I am so confused, everywhere in the net there is reviews and posts saying opposite things about tacima block, and usually the cons win your mind at the end. At least its not something expensive, so i am going to try it out for my self. But if it was something else in its place... lets say a cdp, that would change my mind and look for another player. And if each and every high end player had such a big difference in oppinions/reviews on the net, including a few really bad ones, well i would loose my mind, and maybe buy an aiwa at the end, if you get me... Thats why i think people should think not twice but 7 times before they post a bad word about a product,- especially for the quite expensive ones- they have to double,tripple check it, so other people dont get in to tiring time wasted search adventures. Anyway, cheers

[PELASGOS]

By the way, Dave, how much a belkin pf40 do costs? and by far having read the latest posts, does it comes down to whether your amp is an a/b or a class as far as if someone may use a Tacima block or any block btw? What should i get for my system, including an accuphase e 112? Btw what is this De oxit you are talking about, is it a brand of solvents, is it just for old pins or do they work on new ones too? Cheers

[synsei]

By the way, Dave, how much a belkin pf40 do costs? and by far having read the latest posts, does it comes down to whether your amp is an a/b or a class as far as if someone may use a Tacima block or any block btw? What should i get for my system, including an accuphase e 112? Btw what is this De oxit you are talking about, is it a brand of solvents, is it just for old pins or do they work on new ones too? Cheers

I paid 50 quid for my PF30 Dimitris however it was secondhand. The Tacima did a good job although the PF30 does it better. It's been said that power amps should not be plugged into mains conditioners but I found my Hafler benefited from being plugged into the Tacima. Strangely, the reverse is true of the PF30.

Caig De-Oxit (http://www.connect-audio.co.uk/proddetail.php?prod=DED5L25CA)

[YNWaN]

I was in my local B&Q yesterday and noticed that they had both MK and Crabtree single unswitched 13A mains sockets. I'm pretty sure they had 15A round pin plugs and sockets too. I don't really need a mains distribution block, but I might make myself one any way.

[synsei]

I was in my local B&Q yesterday and noticed that they had both MK and Crabtree single unswitched 13A mains sockets. I'm pretty sure they had 15A round pin plugs and sockets too. I don't really need a mains distribution block, but I might make myself one any way.

These are excellent value, just put an order in :)

Crabtree 2 gang UNSWITCHED Audiophile Mains Socket, DE-OXIT Treated (http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2-GANG-UNSWITCHED-MAINS-SOCKET-HI-FI-AUDIO-AUDIOPHILE-DEOXIT-TREATED-AV-SOCKET-/110840948037?pt=UK_Computing_CablesConnectors_RL&hash=item19cea2a545#ht_1692wt_1396)

[RochaCullen]

I wonder how the tacima compares to the Belkin AV Isolator Home Cinema Surge Protector?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Belkin-Isolator-Cinema-Protector-Sockets/dp/B0002AG9SA/ref=dp_cp_ob_ce_title_2

Anybody had experience of both?

Nathan

[icehockeyboy]

I wonder how the tacima compares to the Belkin AV Isolator Home Cinema Surge Protector?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Belkin-Isolator-Cinema-Protector-Sockets/dp/B0002AG9SA/ref=dp_cp_ob_ce_title_2

Anybody had experience of both?

Nathan

Yes! As I believe a few here have.

The Tac is a good piece of kit, I compared one to a few other brands many times the price, and it held it's head high!

I was happy with it until I also started to see everyone saying how good the Belkin FP 30 was, unfortunately I missed out on the ones being sold at the time, but a helpful AOS member pointed out that the much cheaper one you link to was basically the same unit in a different box, so I bought one at a silly low price, and it really is a better unit than the Tac, everything just sounded better across all audible frequencies. As for not plugging my amp into it, I tried it directly into the wall, and then into the Belk, and could not detect any difference.

PS, The Belkin was being sold at various places for less than a tenner a couple of months ago!

[Puffin]

Cleaning your plugs and fuses with brasso wad is like hearing a breath of fresh air. I would put your "encounter with the Lord" down to the cleaning stuff you did more than the Tacima!

[PELASGOS]

OK, . Maybe i ll buy both conditioners and test them, and after, use the extra one with something else. I 've fixed a block my self with good cable, little better quality than the usuals, but didnt know that these things like Taksima and Belkin existed, so thanks for the info btw.

[brian2957]

Yes! As I believe a few here have.

The Tac is a good piece of kit, I compared one to a few other brands many times the price, and it held it's head high!

I was happy with it until I also started to see everyone saying how good the Belkin FP 30 was, unfortunately I missed out on the ones being sold at the time, but a helpful AOS member pointed out that the much cheaper one you link to was basically the same unit in a different box, so I bought one at a silly low price, and it really is a better unit than the Tac, everything just sounded better across all audible frequencies. As for not plugging my amp into it, I tried it directly into the wall, and then into the Belk, and could not detect any difference.

PS, The Belkin was being sold at various places for less than a tenner a couple of months ago!
Same here Craig . I have both and prefer the Belkin.
Brian.

[RichB]

I have the tacima and to be honest the jury is out... I thought i'd heard better bass and more punch/drive when playing a cd but like all upgrades the effect quickly wears off and we move onto the next thing (that is after all what we do eh!)

I'm happy with the fact that 25quid buys a well made mains block and offers surge protection for my gear if nothing else. I dont think its unreasonable money for that considering what we'd happily spend on other items.

[ursus262]

Dave - we've been around the block (sorry) a few times with the Tacima - most people (myself included) found that they were good for the money - but I did end up taking the amplifier back out and plugging directly into the mains again as it sounded better IMHO so worth trying that if you can be bothered. :)

A point worth considering. I use one of these blocks with desirable results. The only thing I would say is that the impedance of these blocks is quite high and would suggest plugging the amp directly into the mains.

Dave

[Alp]

I wonder how the tacima compares to the Belkin AV Isolator Home Cinema Surge Protector?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Belkin-Isolator-Cinema-Protector-Sockets/dp/B0002AG9SA/ref=dp_cp_ob_ce_title_2

Anybody had experience of both?

Nathan

I have used the Tacima for several years. After looking on another AOS thread the Belkin was highly praised so I bought one for £25. It was quickly removed. Both on its own and with the Tacima connected to the digital outputs (CD etc.) - as others have recommended - I found that in my system it just choked the sound - lost dynamics, space and treble detail. Putting the Tacima back in on its own they all came flooding back. It looks like you just need to try to find-out what works with your system (and household cabling).