QUALITY AND SECURITY OF "LITTELFUSE" PRODUCTS

The fuse argument is much like the power cord argument. People contend that inexpensive wire is in your walls, so why would the last 6 feet matter, and yet most people reading this will agree that it does.

Thom, its not hard to measure the effects of the power cord. The measurements seem to correlate with listening experience (on an amplifier, measure the voltage drop across the cord and also measure the power output; compare to the power output of the amp if the voltage is corrected at the IEC connection using a variac).

We've seen a 2 volt drop across some power cords, which with some of our amplifiers results in a loss of 40 watts. Pretty significant and not a measurement 'buried in the noise'.

You can also measure the effects of a fuse, however we've not been able to measure any effects of the boutique fuses as being any different than the regular ones, assuming that they were indeed the right rating. All that I've ever used is a regular 3 1/2 digit DVM.

If you could use the wiring in the walls as a power cord it would work quite well. However such use is illegal and dangerous due to the wire being solid core.

"You can also measure the effects of a fuse, however we’ve not been able to measure any effects of the boutique fuses as being any different than the regular ones, assuming that they were indeed the right rating. All that I’ve ever used is a regular 3 1/2 digit DVM."

When you say "we've not been able to measure any effects of the boutique fuses..." you’re probably not referring to HiFi Tuning, you know, that squirrely aftermarket fuse company that published third party fuse measurements on their web site. They measured some of the various HIFi Tuning fuses, other fuses, including stock off the shelf fuses, in both directions and cryo'd and in cryo'd. 

Geoffkait:  I've never been able to navigate HiFiTuning's website, even using Google Translate on Chrome.  Perhaps you could post a direct link?

Ralph:  With respect to power cords, I suspect that a lot more is going on than resistance/voltage drop.  If we had the time to play with this, I suspect we'd find inductance, capacitance and shielding would play as significant (if not more) of a role as resistance.

I've done the solid core, household wiring power cord experiment, and the results weren't all that good.  It might be worth repeating this one, however.

Cheers,
Thom

Thom, I think this: ‎www.hifi-tuning.com/pdf/wlfr.eng.pdf  is what you wanted.

All the best,
Nonoise

Nonoise, thanks for providing the link. As some here will recall, the HiFi Tuning measurements were discussed extensively several years ago in the very lengthy "Fuses That Matter" thread. I provided comments on those measurements in a number of posts in that thread, most notably in my post about 3/4 of the way down on this page, dated 5-14-2012, 11:24 am EDT.

Thom, in addition to his comments above about power cord resistance/voltage drop, in a number of past threads Ralph has also emphasized that a power cord should provide bandwidth extending up into the tens of kHz, especially in the case of power amplifiers (since as I’m sure you realize their current draw typically consists of narrow spikes of high amplitude during a relatively small fraction of the 60 Hz cycle). And as you mentioned shielding also figures to be a significant factor in many cases.

I would add, though, that low resistance and hence low voltage drop, wide bandwidth, and good shielding in a power cord can be obtained at much less than kilobuck prices.

Regards,
-- Al

P.S: BTW, Thom, I like your taste in speakers :-) (Mine are Daedalus Ulysses, which when I was last aware were your reference speakers).