Quick and free fuse tweak

It's surprising what low cost tweaks work well. I recently bought a box full of cardboard egg boxes and glued them to every inch of the ceiling in my lounge (5.6m x 7.5m x 2.6m). The difference is unbelievable,  much more detailed cymbals and percussion.

I have been applying blue painters tape to fuses for years, and have spoken about it here, on fuse and tweak threads. It is exactly what bdp24 has indicated. Reducing resonance. If you are brave, you can " lift " your power transformers from the chassis of any component, and place a layer of rubber, cork, or anything else with damping properties ( I have even used mouse pads ), with amazing results, with superior sq. Every transformer creates vibration, and this tweak is amazing. I am surprised so many companies do not do this in their designs. Enjoy ! MrD.

Many transformers are sold by the manufacturers of the product, with rubber like pads.

in the case of toroidals, a top and bottom pad. with the mounting plate and bolt.

exhibit a      

And, in the older days, ie, mid to early 80’s... pioneer, jvc, etc..quite commonly used rubber mount isolated transformer platforms.

Even in all the mid fi gear. Seriously. copper plated screws, the works.

You could open up a mid-late 80’s POS pioneer rack system integrated..and find that exact thing inside of it. I wish I took a photo of it.

I just dismembered one last month to raid it for a few parts. You’d not get $20 for it on Craigslist...but..open it up...and there it is. Double rubber mount isolated platform and large copper plated screws and shouldered mounts for the transformer.

What we called mid fi back then is hi-fi extremism today.

The wankers and haters have no freaking clue sometimes...These companies are not stupid and they know it is worthwhile to do these things, in some scenarios. Important. Critical, even. Billion dollar companies that squeeze nickels as a way of life...and they did this obviously expensive stuff -like breathing. So there is something to it, for sure. 

What the haters will say is that they did it in order to avoid electromagnetic hum induction. Which is true in one way, but it's not the whole story.

Teo, so many pieces of gear that I have opened up, and transformer isolated / modified, did not have any such thing to isolate the transformers. It is quite sad, because for little money, it does wonders. As an example, I recently did an Adcom GFA 535 series II, and things improved dramatically.

@mrdecibel  Thanks for the posts and original tweak info.

The only reason I tried it was because lightning took out the preamp fuse. I've since done the same to 30mm slow blow antique fuses in my vintage tube power amps with noticeable but lesser improvement.

I wonder how close the improvement is to the really expensive fuses.