I spent a few minutes polishing the copper sluggos with a connoisseur’s polishing cloth (gold) until they were visibly shinier and installed them earlier this afternoon.
My system is sounding better than ever with the polished copper, making the brass sound lifeless by comparison. I’ve had a list of errands to do today and it’s now 7:50 PM and I’m listening through my 4th album.
My Vandersteen speakers are producing bass I didn’t know they were capable of in my large listening room. Deep, tuneful bass I can feel in my chest. The impact is much more noticeable than it was before.
The soundstage is clearly defined from front to back and left to right, better than I’ve ever heard it. I feel like I’m hearing the rear corners of the stage with less distortion than ever.
related thoughts:
-The power cables feeding my best equipment (and plugged into the fuse box) are quite a bit better and more costly than the ones I’m running into the fuse boxes. I expect there is more to be gained there, albeit at a much higher cost than the fuse box itself. It’s worth doing though, the price/performance ratio on the fuse box is better than every other aftermarket product I have in my system.
-As someone mentioned above, I feel that the fuse holder in the equipment is, itself, a big part of the problem. A high quality jumper wire bypassing the fuse holder would almost certainly lead to a substantial improvement. I’m not comfortable doing that to my favorite gear (yet, anyway).
-My next step is to apply some contact enhancer and see what that does. I’m planning to use this, unless anyone has an argument for something else performing better.
Bullfrog:
https://www.theruststore.com/Bull-Frog-Electronic-Cleaner-P487.aspx