QUALITY AND SECURITY OF "LITTELFUSE" PRODUCTS

Atmasphere wrote,

""Apparently when you run out of rational arguments there is always the old fallback to name calling."

Actually no- the principle is ’attack the argument not the person’, otherwise you could report my post. You have mis-stated things, quite clearly. I am saying your statements (arguments) are nonsense- including this one."

Your lack of any rational argument again is duly noted. Calling someone’s post nonsense doesn’t qualify as any sort of rational argument. It’s a personal attack, not an attack of the argument. You can’t win any argument by claiming the other fellow’s argument is nonsense or wrong or any such thing. A debate is not over as soon as one person calls the other an idiot or calls his argument stupid or nonsense. Follow? Not to mention your whole LITTELFUSE and Buss fuse defense is actually irrelevant in the context of aftermarket fuses. Any more than claiming Alpha Wire and Belden cables are well made and reliable is relevant to a discussion of audiophile cables. Your claim that LITTELFUSE and Buss fuses are well made and reliable may well be true but as an audiophile, who cares? My recommendation for your next move is to claim, "I don’t really care about aftermarket fuses, anyway."

Cheers,

geoff kait
machina dynamica

The reason tuning fuses are unsuitable for fusing tubes is quite simple. When a glass fuse blows in a DC circuit a plasma is formed in the glass cylinder. This plasma continues until the power supply has dumped all of its energy into that tiny fuse making it either explode or melt the holder. Because this dumping of energy goes through things like cathode resistors they can be destroyed. A proper 1/4 amp fuse blows around that value and its not at all critical. However when a fuse goes plasma the current can be many many amps. it is fact only limited by that 1-10 ohm cathode resistor, the output transformer primary resistance and the hot conducting tube.. Plasma conducts lots of current and the voltage drop is very small as the path is short. When the fuse blows there may be 500 volts in the power supply caps divided by even 50 ohms that's 10 amps, not 1/4. Since the output transformer is in this path we should fear for its life. If the primary wire is thinner than the cathode resistor wire it may be the thing to break the circuit and bye bye output transformer. In the RM-9 the cathode resistor opened up. That is the one and only cathode resistor that has every opened in a RM-9.

Standard fuses are rated to break circuits at 1500 amps and high breaking fuses 10,000 amps. Now you might say Roger is crazy talking about breaking 10.000 amps in a 1/4 fuse but you see from the previous paragraph plasma does not care that the fuse was 1/4 amp because now it has hot vaporized metal for a conductor. One other point, in a AC circuit things are quite different as AC goes through zero 120 times a second and the plasma dissipates rapidly.

How the make theses fuses is quite simple. They fill them with very fine sand.When the element vaporizes the sand fills the space and there is no place for the plasma to form. Gee isn't that simple. The may be made of glass or ceramic (ceramic is simply stronger). Just because a fuse is ceramic there is no guarantee it is filled with sand. So start reading the breaking ratings on Littlefuse and Buss data sheets. 

When I called the distributor of Tuning fuses and asked if they were high breaking he did not know. I then said, I have ceramic fuses in my amplifier, he said these will be fine as they are ceramic too... oh boy

After I repaired the RM-9 that was damaged by tuning fuses i decided to do a little investigation into them.  There were 8 of them so you do the math. They cost more than the tubes they are meant to protect and dont protect them at all.

The maker of these fuses does something that really demonstrates his lack of knowledge of fuses. There is no breaking rating on these fuses and I doubt they know what a breaking rating is. Its not in any of their tests. Out of simple curiosity I broke one open and found the fuse wire was slipped into a narrow Teflon tube. This is part of their "technology" and is not an easy thing to do. This Teflon tube obviously makes things worse as it further contains the plasma.

When people who dont know what they are doing start doing something bad people who know what they are doing need to speak up. 

Roger A Modjeski
Music Reference
Ram Tubes... 

I have been using glass aftermarket fuses for tube electronics for twenty years, including Isoclean fuses and the Audio Magic Super Fuse, the latter being a glass Fuse injected with a liquid of some sort. I never had a single problem.  Was that wrong of me?

geoff kait
machina dynamica
no goats no glory

I recently used the money I have saved on audiophile fuses, cables and other mysterious tweaks to purchase new amplifiers.  I do actually notice a difference in the sound between my other amplifier and the new amplifiers.

Thank you Roger! John Lennon: "Just give me some truth. All I want is some truth".