millercarbon:
Okay so well first off in a house
wired 120v the panel has 240v coming in with the breakers on the left connected
to one 120v leg, the breakers on the right connected to the other 120v leg… But
what about 240v...Well the answer is even then the power coming in one wire is
positive, the other ground or negative. In any case the AC coming into all
components, the first thing it does is go through a transformer (to get
whatever voltage the component uses) then to some diode rectifiers and then to
some power supply caps. Because all components, even though plugged into AC,
they all run on DC. But you knew that, right? ;)
Thank you for responding to my question, but the way I see
it, it shouldn’t matter whether you’re getting your AC from the right or left
side of the panel; both sides are supplying a 120v, 60Hz sine wave (I'll save the 240 discussion for another day). If you put your fuse on the incoming signal,
the field across the fuse will change from +120v to -120v every cycle, so the
current in the fuse will flow first in one direction, and then in the opposite
direction, 60 times a second. At that point in the circuit, the amplitude is
the same in both directions, so the current will spend just as much time flowing
in one direction as the other. I don’t
see how the directionality of the fuse could affect the downstream signal,
unless you’re suggesting that the fuse passes more current on the positive side
of the cycle as the negative side (or vice-versa). We can come back to that later if you like,
but for now I’ll assume that is not what you meant.
Now, you say, let’s look at the signal after it’s been
rectified and stored in a capacitor; that’s fine, because then you would be
dealing with DC, and directionality of the fuse could definitely make a
difference. But my understanding is that
these fuses are located in many different places within the amp, and the
recommendations I’ve seen on Agon say it’s best to replace ALL the fuses with Synergistic
Orange (or Blue). Are they saying that
ALL the fuse locations in a power amp are only passing current in one direction?
That seems really unlikely. I can see how some of the fuse locations
could be limited to DC, and would be affected by directionality, but for the
ones that are passing AC, the direction of the fuse should make no
difference.
