Anyone have experience with "burn-in generators"?

Not sure why anyone would consider a burn in generator. I guess if you have tube equipment and don't listen to often ( ten or fifteen hours a week ) I could understand it.
I've been using an all solid state system the last few years and like most, leave it on 24/7/52, just turn it down at night so not to bother family members, 2 weeks equals 336 hour.
Have not found the need for tubes since shedding myself of door sized panel speakers. Don't miss those horrid looking speakers or hot running tubes one bit.

I have to say it but the names of these devices sound terrible . I never want to ":fry" anything nor "burn" my gear either.
Sorry about this off topic question, but why would one want to use tubes as a first choice, on a large panel speaker. I would be inclined to use SS on them and tubes on cones and domes ?

Ok, here goes. Have the frybaby. Works as advertised really. Don’t want to take away anything from anyone else’s experiences here, but haven’t yet encountered any kind of attenuating of the highs or softening of the bass on anything I’ve tried it on so far (various IC’s and different speaker cables, no pc’s yet). I was glad I got one, it did, the first time I tried it on some old Monster Cable IC’s that had literally thousands of hours on them, wake them right up…much more open, noticeably better highs, a bit better defined transients. I could compare them directly to several other sets of the same IC’s that were the same age (a big bag of orphaned wires). But, you could say in the case of the MC’s it worked a little too well. It revealed the sonic signature of the IC’s that the frybaby couldn’t change – the lower mid coloration and overall slowness of the cables still remained along with noticeable grit. Actually, because of the frybaby results, I began to suspect that the cable was not an inherently good design. At the time I was first getting my feet wet with the basics of DIY cable design and I got curious enough to cut a pair open and see for myself what was underneath. Lo and behold, after the removing the thick, thick, black insulation and the copper braid shield, the internal conductor (hot) was (for an IC) a very thick gauge of multi-strand wire…! A definite No No. Good grief. No Wonder it had so much grit and lower mid coloration…all that copper – and multi-strand yet – nothing but grit. No minimalist design, to say the least. Evedently these things must have been designed for only one purpose - sheer durablilty. All that was kinda crazy to me at the time.

Then I got curious again. If the frybaby was NOT changing the adverse effects of the conductor here, then what WAS it working on? I suspected it was the insulation, so I came up with a simple experiment to help shed some light. I took yet another identical pair of the MC’s (400mkII’s) and cut them down, removing everything but the connectors and hot (and a white nylon tubing around the hot that I couldn’t remove) and return wiring and gave them a listen. Presto! Even a bit More open than the frybabied wires that still had their insulation on them untouched. That told me something and I began to get some ideas about insulation in general and began to suspect that insulation can be a far more deleterious thing on sound quality than we average audiophiles even imagine, but still needed more confirmation.

Later on I tested some OFC speaker wires, again more than 20 years of use on them (thick polyethylene insulation). Again they were much more open than before the frybaby, even the soundstage was a little better…not night and day or anything, but I could at least tell that there was a difference and that the difference was actually an improvement and not just a sideways change. Tried it later on a new pair of MAC Silver Soundpipe IC’s, this time without much success…a little improvement on first listen compared to the unbroken-in sound, but not much. I tried to repeat the treatment and the sound deteriorated. According to Hagerman it is possible to overcook something (it’s that burning smell…just kidding ;>). Actually if you should ever do that by accident or on purpose you then just play 40 or 50 hours of music through the wire and the problem is cured…which is what I had to do the MAC’s. After that I was content to continue break-in according to the maker. Some makers do not recommend cooking with their wires (or particular ones of theirs, anyway). Wasn’t sure about the MAC’s until I tried it. Didn’t know if I was entirely sure it was the silver conductors or the insulation (different kind than that black, rubbery/spongy type that MC and others use which was so prevalent for so long, until more recently. Then I tried it on some Monarchy PCOCC speaker wires (good stuff!). Out of the box the wires were better in all respect that what I’d been used to, but things weren’t very open yet, although I still had great faith in break-in for that. But, they were covered in the very same soft, black insulation as the MC’s were…so… This time instead of using the frybaby on them I simply (and with painstaking care not to stress the PCOCC conductors) removed the insulation with an Exacto knife. (removing the outer jacketing can mess a trifle bit with capacitance with a star-quad design, but found it to be sonically negligible in my setup). Not only did everything spring to life in the openness department, but from that point on there was zero more break-in period – nada, gone, zilcho.

What that told me was twofold: that insulation in general can be a big factor (maybe the single biggest factor) to consider in (wire) break-in and also that this very kind of black, spongy insulation may well be the frybaby’s favorite food and, by way of its algorithm, that may even be what it was designed to do…a cheap (single-algorithm) cooker that’s squarely aimed at the insulation that’s on about 60% of the wiring out there – and most especially on the lower-cost wiring (on about 60% of the wiring at the time of the frybaby’s inception, at least). But, owning the frybaby has been eye-opening and I’ve even begun to look at my wiring purchases differently as a result. Purchased a pair of Mapleshade Excalibur ribbon IC’s (and have been delighted with them) on the strength of the attention given to insulation (among other things) and despite the fact that Mr. Sprey insists that they be burned in with music only. Big lesson for me: black, spongy insulation = always BAD, period. Better even to not have it at all than to cook it (with the frybaby at least). Why would you want to use a bandaid when you can avoid getting a bruise in the first place? Sure the difference between sonics of the wires with removed outer insulation and the frybabied wires was only about 5-10% improvement, but removing the problem stuff was free. Destroying resale value may not be for everyone, but I must be enough of a DIY’er that, for my own purposes, I don’t always really care about that so much, unless it's a big-time investment, anyway. There may be other insulation out there the frybaby is either just as good with or maybe not nearly so good with, but I will leave that for others to pick up on, but unless I should run across an experience to the contrary, this is pretty much my own 2 cents so far. Regards.

An addendum to Ivan nosnibor's post, with which I agree. It's particularly
important to cook phono cables, the ones used from a cart/tonearm to a
phonostag,e because the signal they carry is so minuscule that the cables
never get really broken-in otherwise. Friends and I have also used my
FryKleaner to cook the tonearm wires themselves. Takes a little ingenuity
but is well worth the trouble and, yes, the results are audible in terms of
clarity and openness.

EDIT: Do not have the cartridge attached to the tonearm wires if
attempting this. The idea is to cook ONLY the tonearm wires, which
requires making a wire harness to connect to the clips at the cartridge end.
And do not exceed the number of hours (72 maximum in the case of the
FryKleaner; for others, use the cooker manufacturer's recommendation) for
the tonearm wire "burn." You're dealing with fragile wires here and don't
blame me for any accidents/overcooking/etc :-)

Dopogue - I agree with you. It is almost impossible for a phono cable to burn in with that miniscule signal passing through it. Especially silver ones. Here's what I did.

I got some male RCA's and some reasonable lengths of solid core copper wire of a gauge that fits into the cartridge clips. I soldered the wire to the male RCA's and inserted the other, bare end into the cartridge clips. Then I plugged the male RCA's into my CD player and the other end of the phono interconnect into my preamp inputs (NOT the phono circuit). Then let it spin and break in just like any other interconnect. It burns in both the tonearm wire and the phono interconnact at the same time.

100 hours of that will never be replicated via the output of a regular phono cartridge.

Enjoy,
Bob