Synergistic Red Fuse ...

aolmrd1241 .... 

Thanks for your input on the Legacy Signature III's. 

With certain mods, and tube electronics, the Sig III's are a fantastic speaker that performs, at least in my system, way beyond their price point.  

Over the years I've had a multitude of speakers, including huge electrostatic panels Acoustat IV's, Martin Logan's and a variety of conventional speakers as well. So far, the Sig III's are performing better than any of them considering the overall picture. 

On the Legacy Focus's ... I love those speakers and have considered them in the past. I fear they would overdrive my room though. 

I was wondering ... what electronics were you using with the Legacy speakers? All of my friends who have them, including myself, have found that they really come alive with tube amps. We've all bought our Legacy's from guys who were using solid state amps ... and they just couldn't get the speakers to sound right, so they sold them to us. *lol*  I think its an underground secret.  

I have a friend who has a pair of Sig III's in his living room being driven by one of Grover's modified Dyna Stereo 70's, and its pure magic. In fact, it was his demo of those speakers that convinced me to chuck the Martin Logan's and replace them with the Sig III's. He has the Legacy Focus' in his main listening room. Again .... magic. 

At this point in time, if one is patient, the Signature III's can be had on the used market for around $1800 per pair and the Focus 20/20's for around $2500.  This would be for speakers in mint condition. In my opinion, its one of the biggest bargains in audio ... but again ... the only way to fly with these speakers is to use really good tube electronics. 

Hang in there. 

Oregonpapa,

I guess my reasoning would be that the more demand SR has, the more they would manufacture at a time.....bringing costs down.

I assume high-end audio works differently from normal retail manufacturing?

If my amp didn't take 7 fuses, I'd be more willing to give them a try.

Cheers!

Oregonpapa, if you do eventually obtain a REL sub, be aware that when connecting it to many ARC models, including yours, there are some very important but VERY non-obvious considerations that are involved in how it should be hooked up. The second item below is especially non-obvious, while being VERY important.

First, you would want to connect the sub at speaker-level, to the outputs of your amp, rather than at line-level to the outputs of your preamp. One reason for doing that is that is what REL generally recommends, but more importantly the line-level input impedance of most or all REL subs is only 10k (definitely including the T5, although the S5’s input impedance doesn’t appear to be specified). That is too low for your ARC preamp to drive without significant deep bass rolloff, with 20K being its minimum recommended load.

Second, and even more importantly, when you connect the sub to the outputs of your power amp DO NOT connect the black (ground) wire from the sub to the 0 ohm/common/negative output terminal of the amp. In many balanced ARC amps, including yours I’m pretty certain, the 4 ohm terminal is what is connected internally to the amp’s circuit ground. Therefore the black wire from the sub’s Neutrik connector should be connected to the 4 ohm terminal of either channel (not both) of the amp. The red wire from the sub would be connected to the 8 ohm right channel terminal, and the yellow wire from the sub would be connected to the 8 ohm left channel terminal, assuming you would be using just one sub.  Connect the main speakers to whatever terminals you presently connect them to.

Also, see this thread. (Note, btw, that in the first sentence of the second paragraph of the OP in that thread, he meant "not optimal" when he said "optimal").

Regards,
-- Al

Yes it will be interesting to see how the Black fuse morphs in the sub as it breaks in. With my streamer, DAC/pre and amps, my first impressions after going Black were generally positive, but over time there were alternate moments of, "Where did all that bass come from?" "Where did all the bass go?" "Oh my dog, that's better than perfect--stay like that!" and so on.

As I said above, my sub settings have been very stable over time, and any time I'm moved to change the level or crossover a notch, I end up back where I started so, with break-in, I will be interested to see whether I am moved to adjust the sub during the next few weeks as the fuse does its thing.

Another observation about these fuses is that they seem to make each component you put them in more like themselves, assuming the components are well enough engineered in the first place. In the situation at hand, the Black fuse just seems to be enhancing the REL-ishness of my sub in my system.

Off topic, a well chosen and well set up sub in a good room does do a lot more for the music than just go boom. In my experience, many people over-think things when doing set-up, and end up crossing over too high and setting the level too low.

nyame: I believe the B2 has three fuses, one at the IEC, and two internal rail fuses on the board. Sorry.

Andynotadam

I cannot get to the the IEC without opening the box. When I do open the box I'll see how difficult it will be to get at the circuit boards. My user manual list the main fuse as 3.15ma but there is no mention of the values for the pcb mounted fuses. I interpret this to mean either they do not wish users to meddle around with the boards or that specialized tools are required.