Y power cable for Monoblocks

Oh...let me mention this,

I am currently using a y-power cord to run my VTL tiny triodes. Low wattage little brutes. The power cord comes from Dell servers (rack mount) that have redundant power supplies (hence the y-power cord). Typical power cord gauge. Honestly, for these amps, I prefer this setup. Not only does it keep the power cord mess to a minimum (obviously), but allows for a one-source origin of power. Dedicated line of course. I don't hear a difference between this and the normal setup. Realistically, I would not use this setup for more powerful amps (monos). Cheers.

Watch the power cord guage sometimes they are 16 or 18 guage. Basically you want 12 guage. As far as conditioners you need to try them and see if how they effect the sound sometimes it good sometimes bad. Panamax makes some cheap one $50-100 used I had luck with saved my equipnment once it also will provide basic filtertion and surge protection. But I would just use a good power strip or a power conditioner.

Power isn't signal. There's miles & miles of wire out there before wwe tap into it... a few more feet won't hurt there... as you're about to do.

Agreed, power isn't signal. However, following your logic, power cords should have no impact on the signal. In fact I should get an extra long power cord, for convenience. Say, I would like to listen to my amps at my neighbor’s place. After all there are 1300 km from my home to nearest Hydro Electric dam, what's an extra 100 feet.

RE: Protection
First the amps each have a fuse (2 amps). Isn’t surge protection, simply adding protection on-top of protection. It would be like buying a credit default swap, to protect against my insurance company going bankrupt.

Second, I live in Canada, were the season for electrical storms is 3 month out of the year. Moreover I generally unplug my gear from the wall during storms.

Third, I do have surge protection for my digital components, TV, dvd etc…

Forth my spinning gear (I assume you mean turn-table) is Technics SL1200 which is driven by a DC servo motor with a quartz lock. So variations in voltage do not affect their performance as far I know.

Finally, I do have some issues with my power, as Al is aware. But a surge protector is putting a band-aid on much more serious problem that affects my home as a whole. I rather pay a qualified electrician $200 to resolve the root cause of the problem.

Nicksr...you have concluded well in my opinion. Get a dedicated line and be done with it. You can still use a y-cable IF your amps are low wattage. Give it a shot, you may be surprised. There is only one problem I see that cannot be avoided...your live in Canada! OK OK I'm joking for heavens sake. Cheers!

Hi Nick,

I think that most of the comments on protection that were in your last post make a lot of sense under your particular circumstances. But I want to point out, fwiw, that fuses in your equipment are very unlikely to provide meaningful protection in the event of a large surge caused by a nearby lightning strike.

First, they are far too slow. Second, they are easily bridged (jumped across) by a sufficiently large voltage spike. Third, they don't protect against what may be on the ac neutral wire or the ac safety ground wire. Basically, they are just in series with the ac hot wire.

The primary purpose of a fuse is to prevent damage internal to the component that may otherwise occur as a secondary effect of some other internal problem. An example being a power transformer overheating and being destroyed due to excessive current being drawn by an internal short circuit, or by a shorted component such as a capacitor.

Lots of people plug their power amps directly into the wall, while providing filtering and/or surge suppression for other components. And for many of them, I have no doubt that it provides better sonics than if they were to put the power amps through a protective device. But with that benefit comes a little bit of risk.

Best of luck!

-- Al