I have the Eaton on the main panel it was around $100 plus the electrician’s time to install it which wasn’t much, because he was doing a whole lot of other work here. For the main system, everything runs from dedicated lines fed by a Controlled Power Iso transformer which has its own large surge protection board. In both cases, there are pilot lights that indicate when the surge protection should be replaced. (MOVs become ineffective). I don’t have any point of use surge protection on the main system components, but have them on virtually every appliance and on my second system. (My Quad 57s stay plugged in and ’on’ all the time, and for those, I use a ZeroSurge from Frenchtown, NJ, a company that I believe holds some patents that it licenses to others for this type of surge protection).
I still think if you get a really close strike you are toast, but the surges and spikes should probably be within the range of protection of most of these devices. I think the cheapy power strips with surge protection-- which don’t tell you anything about the state of the MOVs-- are about worthless. And, I don’t know what the point of use type do to the sound. It doesn’t matter as much on my second system, since it is a vintage, bandwidth limited system anyway, but I was always reluctant to stick point of use surge protectors on the main system. I have a few sitting around, from Furman, to old Richard Gray stuff that was used in a big projection system many years ago (along with his 240 volt step down) and never used them for the main hi-fi. I know @Eric Squires is a big fan of the Furmans.
Agree re your decision not to invest more in yet another repair without getting to the bottom of this.
I gather none of your other components have been affected, only the Esoteric?
I still think if you get a really close strike you are toast, but the surges and spikes should probably be within the range of protection of most of these devices. I think the cheapy power strips with surge protection-- which don’t tell you anything about the state of the MOVs-- are about worthless. And, I don’t know what the point of use type do to the sound. It doesn’t matter as much on my second system, since it is a vintage, bandwidth limited system anyway, but I was always reluctant to stick point of use surge protectors on the main system. I have a few sitting around, from Furman, to old Richard Gray stuff that was used in a big projection system many years ago (along with his 240 volt step down) and never used them for the main hi-fi. I know @Eric Squires is a big fan of the Furmans.
Agree re your decision not to invest more in yet another repair without getting to the bottom of this.
I gather none of your other components have been affected, only the Esoteric?