In October I visited Definitive Audio and took some pictures of the stunning finish on the latest example of the Living Voice Vox Olympian horn loudspeaker. At the time I spotted two new power cables from Audio Note Japan/Kondo the company that makes such fabulous single ended amplifiers, I couldn’t help but be drawn to their unusual nomenclature and colour. There are two models, ACz-Avocado which is appropriately green, the green of avocado skin rather than flesh, and Acc-Persimmon. The persimmon fruit looks like a tomato with an elaborate stem/leaf arrangement and is a wonderful orange colour. I think that that is where the similarity between the fruit and the cable begins and ends however.
ACc-Persimmon power cable comes in a two metre length as standard, this is apparently because it sounds better than shorter lengths presumably because whatever effect it has on the power being delivered is increased. I asked the UK distributor Kevin Scott at Defintive Audio if it would sound better if it were longer still and his experiments with the previous Kondo power cable STc-AC would seem to confirm as much, but of course the price would rise. Two metres is apparently a good balance of performance to price.
Specs are a little scanty at present but Acc-Persimmon has a core of twenty, four strand PCOCC (pure copper-ohno continuous cast) conductors with cotton windings to provide suspension and a braided shield. It has a Furutech IEC plug with Kondo branding and an MK 13 amp mains plug (in the UK at least).
I used ACc-Persimmon on a number of components but the first on stage was a Canary CD-300 (of which more soon), this has a tube output stage and therefore some likely synergy with a Kondo product, so expectations were positive. But I was still taken aback by the transformation it wrought when replacing an Isotek Premier cable, the first thing that hits you is the sense of substance in the sound, the music has more body and seems properly planted in the soundstage. It’s almost like the sound goes right down to the ground rather than being slightly ethereal and projected upwards. It doesn’t restrict height however, in fact it does the opposite the sense of scale is increased so that violins can soar. The character of those instrument is also fleshed out rather well and there’s more juice, more fluency to the music.
Making the same cable swap on the solid state Resolution Audio Cantata CD/DAC/preamp ushers in a more open presentation and improves timing. This came as a surprise because the sound overall is more relaxed with ACc-Persimmon delivering power and that doesn’t necessarily improve leading edge definition. What it’s doing is reducing noise, filtering RF and the like in the mains so that the power supply in the hardware has an easier job. I was prompted to try it on my DAC of the moment the Metrum Acoustics Hex which really is quite a remarkable converter whatever power cord you put on it. Here the Persimmon effect was to increase the sense of pace with Frank Zappa’s Wind Up Working in a Gas Station (from Zoot Allures), it also added meat to the bottom end and exposed more of the savage guitar sound he used on the track. The cable is more than a third of the price of the DAC but if you have sorted the rest of the system this attractive cable will take it to the next level, the problem is that you will want one for every component!