Sunny Day Out At The Chord Company!

Yesterday we spent a very enjoyable day as guests of The Chord Company at their factory near Amesbury.

I must admit that the rare event of early morning sunshine yesterday was suggesting a visit to the seaside more than the thought of spending a day in a factory.  The usual traffic chaos on the M3 didn't help either but we soon arrived at The Millsway Centre and were warmly greeted by Chord's cable guru Nigel Finn.  It was immediately obvious that Chord Company House was a great place to work, light and spacious and everyone there was welcoming, relaxed and enthusiastic and any desire to escape to the beach instantly dissipated.  

Matt, our friendly Chord representative, guided us around the factory and we saw the care and skill which goes into assembling Chord interconnects and cables.  This was soon to become even more apparent as we were next given the opportunity to make some interconnects ourselves, ably assisted by Mike. The time consuming attention to detail in the construction of Chord products was highlighted by our attempts to assemble leads.  It's safe to say that customer orders would take somewhat longer if we were the in production instead of the highly skilled Chord team!  Thanks to Mike and the rest of the team for correcting any errors in our work and for turning our attempts into useable products!

After an excellent lunch provided by Chord we spent the afternoon in their excellent demonstration room with Matt taking us through most of the Chord interconnects and speaker cables with differences being clearly demonstrated between products all the way through the range.  Highlights were the new Chord Signature Digital Tuned Aray (£400 for a 1m RCA-RCA) which was a revelation and the newly released Epic Reference speaker cable (£125 per mono metre) also sounded fantastic, open, coherent and transparent.  Everything sounded great at it's price point but we were reminded how much really good cables can transform a system, turning hi-fi sound into real music.  The better the cables got the more the speakers and hi-fi disappeared allowing the music to fill the room unhindered.  Once we'd reached the dizzy heights of Sarum Tuned Aray mains cables, Sarum Tuned Aray digital interconnects, analogue interconnects and speaker cables the music was a solid three dimensional presence in the room.  It would be churlish to talk about price at this stage but for those who can afford it and want to experience the full emotional impact of music in their home Chord Sarum Tuned Aray is the way to achieve it.

We had a fantastic day at The Chord Company and would like to thank everyone there for making us so welcome and making it such an enjoyable experience, and, to top it all, the sun was still shining when we headed home!