fuses - the $39 ones or the 85 cent ones


My Rogue Cronus recently blew a slow blow fuse. I was surfing to find a replacement. The stock fuse is a typical metal end cap, glass and "wire" fuse. The audio emporiums only seemed to offer these $39 German gold plated end wunderkinds. I finally found "normal" fuses from a guitar amp site. Has anyone tried the uber fuses and found the sound better? Hard to understand how it could be. Thanks for any thoughts.
joe_in_seattle
"Having the fuses in backwards causes the highs to become shrill, forward and hard sounding, bass lacks focus and instruments seem a bit out of sync in relationship to each other. The stock fuses are less dynamic, less transparent, do not image as well and seem to add a bit more distortion." That sounds pretty significant. Do try Magfan's test and see if you can tell. I tried this "blind" approach with the two Hi-fi Tuning fuses in my transport and DAC, and I could not hear it. Now, this argument can, and has gone on forever, but all I can say is try the fuses and have someone make the changes so you don't know which is in. If there was a noticeable difference in bass, dynamics, transparency, etc you should be able to notice it with this approach, and if there is, great, you got a big improvement for very little $$$. If you can't, then stick to the $1 fuses.

If you stand in front of and away from the mirror a hundred times, you will start to see yourself differently.

If you have to squint to hear a difference, then perhaps there is no difference.

Try "Difference & Repetition" by Gilles Deleuze. It might help.
This puts the naysayers (me, perhaps) in a bad spot. If someone can really tell, say 90% of the time when the hi-fi tuning fuse is installed, than some of the brain trust has to figure out WHY.
Those who try this, please keep track of '
1. number of trials
2. who did the change
3. Results
4. What fuse / used where / what equipment.

That should 'bout do it for now.
Personally I am more skeptical than most but if Dave_b is happy with his fuse experiment it sure as hell doesn't bother me. Does he believe he hears a difference? Yes.
Do I believe there is a difference? No.
Who's opinion matters? Pretty simple really.
Enjoy your $39 fuses Dave.
I'm happy with my system and am not ever going to spend my time trying to improve it with $39 fuses. The amount of time it would take to conduct the experiment is more than I care to invest. If I want to improve it I'll look elsewhere... new amp, new source, tweak the room treatments maybe.