I feel your pain. I had a similar experience, though with my solid state Vitus spinner in this case. I was routing cables behind my racks & jiggling the power connector to my player when I smelt a suspicious ’burnt’ smell. Short story, we finished the setup and turned on my amp and cdp. The first thing I noticed - the display on my cdp was out. I thought "Oh no". I wanted to rule out inadvertently switching off the display via the remote, so I inserted a disc & pressed play. Nothing. After consulting the manual, I checked the fuses which looked blown, and further consulted with my Audio Engineer who confirmed same, but re-assured me the fuses appeared to have done their job and protected the player. He also said the burnt smell was likely just a little carbon residue on the contacts from the ’arc’. So I replaced the fuses with standard replacement fuses (nothing fancy), tested the player and it ran fine. To be on the safe side though I brought the player into my AE for a full check over. After inspecting and testing my player, he confirmed the fuses had done their job and gave my player a clean bill of health. He just cleaned up the contacts, and all was well. But that was a salutary lesson in setup 101!
Bad sound problem solved. Duh moment. Ever happen to you?
A week ago a mains fuse blew on a Rogue M-180 monoblock amp (speaker cable ends had worked themselves loose and touched). I replaced the main fuses in both amps... fixed (I thought) However, the sound was a bit harsher, a bit thinner. Soundstage a bit narrower. I thought it was the new fuses, perhaps needing to break in. Tried a different brand of fuse (which sounded different, by the way... but not better) Day by day, the new sound was getting on my nerves... I was doing things I never do, like experiment with my sub. A few days in I was questioning whether the system was ever really as good as I'd thought. Had my hearing changed? Allergies? Finally I thought to check the bias on the power tubes... even though lit, there was no current going through one power tube. Along with the main fuse, a tube fuse had blown. Replaced the tube fuse, bringing the 8th power tube back online, finally bringing the sound back to normal. Ever been through something like that?
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