Call me a fool
Yeah first off I would change tubes, cables etc.. and believe in the results before Fuses.. However, I am one of the few within the last few months to say "Okay its cheap enough why not?"
First I used an ISOCLEAN which has gone up about 15 bucks over the original 20 dollar price which is ridiculous enough.. Anyway I made sure to maximize the rating as far as the equipment manufacture would recommend or allow with warranty intact
I found for my preamp that it was a 2 amp FAST blow fuse in it.. Called them up and they said yeah we use those as they are on hand and normally fine in most applications, but they are 3 cent from taiwan fuses, you can use 3 amp SLO blow fuses no problem behind our transformer in that unit..
So Of course I did because I dont want a lower rating first off due to if it did decide to blow its very expensive to replace with another 35 dollar fuse, and now with a 1 amp bigger rating that problem should not occur Plus it will have a larger more conductive element inside
I immediatley found the Isoclean to sound "Bigger" soundstage, Air, Transient response, Delay and decay of the notes, Bass was faster and tighter, highs were actually much clearer but not over the top.. ISOCLEAN does have direction printed and I followed it although I can not say it matters or not
Beyond that I put back a Cheaper but better 3 amp fuse standard slo blow not the original 2 amp in order to compare.. YIKES!! I really hoped the good Bussman Slo blow which was very much better built and extremely similar to the isoclean element accept for no gold or copper contact would be as good and put this to rest
However immdiatly the soundstage collapsed, became fuzzy, and really was like turning my source into a cheap walkman with the more compressed and distant sound
I tried this again
The fuse made a bigger difference than you would think or believe. I also have some good power cables, and guess what a 9 gauge silver and copper conductor feeding a cheap aluminum/tin cylinder with a hair thick element in it does not get its optimum performance, so a good fuse feeding your transformer after the fancy power cord does show merit.
I did this test next with the 39 dollar HIFI tuning fuses
I put them in to my monos
First you could tell it was clearer but a bit too SHARP sounding.. Now funny thing again was I called this AMP manufacture and told them my Fuse extravaganza and figured they would laugh, yet they flat out TOLD me it will make a difference and they don't tell anybody but they carry the ISOCLEAN fuses for their units and will sell them to customers on their request for a pretty penny
They also stated we use undersized amp ratings of 4 amp and I could go to 5 amp slo blows with no issue.
Again the HIFI tuning fuses made a difference however was not necessarily all that much better, but different
Then the real mind bender I flipped them over!! BIG smooth sound now, not sharp in the upper vocals and things were really very smooth and integrated not so much separated sound.. They actually sounded like putting your Speakers out of Phase with reversing the positive and negative leads in the wrong direction on the fuse
WEIRD!!! And I tried this over again with a friend to make sure I was not nuts
Its actually true, but HIFI TUNING fuses are not marked like ISOCLEAN but they do have the HIFI Arrow for the logo so you can see which is which and chose yourself.
Finally the 2 dollar 5 amp bussman fuses slo blow strike again this time with the amps.. AGAIN fuzzy and bass was vast and powerful but not controlled like things were "Pulsing" with bad AC power
. Maybe I have some Bad A/C everybody does, but a fuse for whatever reason can help maybe, I can't explain it, but thats it.. Background noise and hiss was also reduced to next to nothing with the better fuse
You go figure it out!! I really wanted to take these fuses out, because I could not think they could be that effective, but getting inside the equipment now and seeing the fuses directly connected to your transformer primary being fed by your 1000 dollar power cable, they make some serious sense! Good Luck
PS- which is better ISOCLEAN or HIFI? No idea, but my decision was based on trying the Isoclean in my preamp and it sounded excellent with no reason to change off the bat, and the fact is just like using all the same cables or tubes maybe the results will be too much or not enough, I just decided to give the HIFI a shot in the amps for the hell of it.. Both are good.. I did use Isocleans in another pair of amps for sale, and they were as excellent in that application as well.. I might even go to say the Isocleans are best suited for tube Gear... And Hifi tuning are good for both. In the end I rather just mix it up and have both worlds there I guess and its just different.
