Synergistic Red Fuse ...

Dave ... 

Thank you so much for your wonderful post. You've made my day.  Very humbling, I must say. :-)

It's been really nice to share the things that work in my system with fellow hobbyists, especially those folks who actually take the time and go through the expense of actually trying the suggestions. Its satisfying when other's get great results from these suggestions as well. This thread has turned out to be an excellent vehicle for that sharing.

Its all about getting us closer to the music we love so much. 

This is such an interesting hobby where under normal circumstances its so expensive to attain significant improvements ... the kind of improvements that would usually take a major equipment upgrade, that when you find a simple tweak like a fuse for 120 bucks, people need to know about it. That's my take, anyway. The friends made along the way? ... well, that's a super bonus. 

I want to wish everyone who has participated in this tread a very Merry Christmas.  

Frank

Has anyone tried the audiophile earwax fuses?  :) 

I have shared this before and want to bring it up again as it is a topic that is very interesting to me.  The designer of Tube Research Labs equipment taught me fuses, all fuses, degrade sound no matter the audiophile brand. He never put fuses in his highly regarded tube amps and preamps. He built his gear with high quality on/off switch circuit breakers. I now do this as a mod to my tube gear for the best possible fuse - no fuse. This seems like such an obvious design idea and I am floored more do not adopt it. I can tell you from experience the breaker worked wonderfully on two occasions when needed and the amp simply turned off. 

The sound of no fuse is superior to all fuses regardless of the cost. Remember the cheap contacts and holders that secure those fuses also impact the sound. 
Paul of TRL always bucked conventional thinking in his designs and was a brilliant designer. This small design idea coupled with many, many others made for exceptional sounding gear. 

I can accept the concept of sound quality hierarchy of no fuse-premium fuse-standard fuse infuse in that order. Its become clear to me that based on listening, the fuse seems to be a bottleneck in terms of sound quality. The upgrade fuses in my components simply and consistently improved the sound.

If I were to ever commission the building of custom components from scratch I’d go with a circuit breaker. In the here and now with my current components I’m very happy with upgrade quality fuses. It "may" be an advantage that my components require only one fuse as opposed to several/multiple fuses per component. I do believe however that this is just one variable among numerous others that affect the sound. I've heard components with fuses that sound as good or better than those that eschew them. So many factors determine the final sound quality of audio products. Audio is fascinating. 
Charles 

True Charles, but on the one topic of fuses in amp design I would like to see more effort in their elimination. Status quo seems to rule the day in amp design with fuses. BTW it is very easy to mod most existing amps to eliminate the fuse with an on/off breaker switch.