We describe a new high-sensitivity experiment for observing cosmic microwav
e background (CMB) anisotropies. The instrument is a two-element interferom
eter operating at 33 GHz with a similar to 3 GHz bandwidth. It is installed
on the high and dry Teide Observatory site on Tenerife where successful be
am-switching observations have been made at this frequency. Two realization
s of the interferometer have been tested with element separations of 11.9 l
ambda and 16.7 lambda. The resulting angular resolution of similar to 2 deg
rees was chosen to explore the amplitude of CMB structure on the large angu
lar scale side of the Doppler (acoustic) peak. It is found that observation
s are unaffected by water vapour for more than 70 per cent of the time when
the sensitivity is limited by the receiver noise alone. Observations over
several months are expected to give an rms noise level of similar to 10-20
mu K covering similar to 100 resolution elements. Preliminary results show
stable operation of the interferometer with the detection of discrete radio
sources as well as the Galactic plane at Dec. = +41 degrees and -29 degree
s.