This is interesting. I've been using different fuses, since (and I had to come on here to see when I first started posting about fuses: senior moment…) 2012.
Just 4-6 days ago, I noticed that my system sounded really, REALLY bright, especially on Mercury Living Presence CDs. Stravinsky's 'The Firebird' was pretty screechy on cut 23. I had gotten speaker cables weeks ago, and were breaking them in (same company, updated cables), and until this week, never thought the sound 'bright' or 'screechy.' So, tonight, I was talking to a friend and suddenly exclaimed that, if I'd changed the fuses in my other equipment, I must have changed it in the CD player as well. At the time, I could not discern correct orientation, but that was hardly surprising: terminal illness in my family had just begun, and I was not in the state of mind to be as observant.
Anyway, opened the CD player, and sure enough, there was a Synergistic SR-20 fuse in there. I changed the orientation, and SOME of the brightness was ameliorated. I wanted to simply post now, while I was thinking about it.
Fuse application is clearly not Universal. What works in one application does not necessarily translate to others. I found a thread from 4 years ago, when I first started experimenting with fuses, where I had complained that the Hurricanes sounded not so good with the Hi Fi fuses in them (I first posted that in 2012). 4 years later, and post some losses in my family, I looked in the Hurricanes fuse box. Something just told me to look in there: Hi Fi tuning fuses in them. I had WONDERED what was wrong with the system over the past few months, although the use of the Hurricanes was to bypass the amp stage of an integrated amp. Don't recall WHY I put the Hi Fi tuning fuses back in the amps, but it must've simple been that I forgot they didn't work as well. So , I'll be putting Synergistics back in - as soon as I can locate them. (Don't ask. It's been 4 years, and I have fuses upstairs, in the basement, in boxes in the shed, the garage, and, I'm sure, stored in trees outside [ hope the squirrels haven't found them]). I had stopped using the Hurricanes in the system because of the lack of dynamics and low-level detail. Now I know why - but don't know WHEN I put them back in the amps. (Must've been during that bad period, when my memory was ONLY a memory - to me) But the CD player is clearly better with the orientation change. Just a warning to those who don't see the improvement that maybe it's not the fuse: maybe it's the orientation or the component into which the fuse has been placed.
