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Direction of aftermarket fuses (only for believers!)

It is with reluctance that I start another thread on this topic with the ONLY GOAL for believers to share their experience about aftermarket fuses.
To others: you can call us snobs, emperors w/o clothes,... etc but I hope you refrain posting just your opinion here. If you did not hear any difference, great, maybe there isn’t.

The main driver for this new post is that I am starting a project to mod my NAD M25 7 ch amp for my home theater. It has 19 fuses (2 per channel, 4 on the power supply board, 1 main AC) and I will try a mix of AMR Gold, SR Black and Audio Magic Platinum (anyway that is the plan, I may try out some other brands/models). As it is reasonably difficult to change them, esp the ones on each channel module that requires complete disassembly, I would like to know what the direction is for these models mentioned and of course, others who HAVE HEARD there is a difference please share your experience on any fuse model you have tried.

Fuses are IME directional:
Isoclean is one of the first to indicate the direction (2008/2009) on their fuses. Users of HiFi Tuning (when the awareness rose quite a bit amongst audiophiles) have mostly heard the difference.

As an IEEE engineer, I was highly skeptical of cabling decades ago (I like the speaker design of John Dunlavy but he said on many occasions that cables nor footers matter at all, WRONG!). Luckily, my curiosity proved me wrong as well. I see the same skepticism that I and many others had about the need for aftermarket cables many, many years ago now on fuses and esp on the direction on fuses.

Another example is the direction of capacitors (I do not mean electrolytic types). Even some manufacturers now and certainly many in the past did not believe it can make a difference sonically. Maybe some do but it takes time in the assembly to sort and put them in the right direction/order (esp as some of the cap manufacturers still do not indicate "polarity") so that maybe is one argument why this is not universally implemented.








128x128jazzonthehudson
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jazzonthehudson's avatar
jazzonthehudson OP
277 posts
 
Jeff, simply on Fleabay. I bought them first from Darren (AMR distributor) before but was pleased to find them this year elsewhere. As other mentioned, not great (compared to the current line up) but certainly better than stock.

David, you may want to compare the SR Black with the AM BeeWax, given the level of resolution of your system.

-Charles
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,510 posts
 
Good one jea48! When Ric Schultz was modifying the Modulus 2 pre-amp, he was offering a fuse-bypass option. On a tube pre-amp? Probably not a good idea, but I had him do it to mine anyway. Older and wiser, I wouldn’t now.
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
jea48
2,039 posts
05-03-2016 11:09am
geoffkait said:
Let’s see, should I use a non UL rated fuse and get better sound or use UL rated fuse and get worse sound? What to do, what to do?

lol
Hell, why stop there. The equipment will probably sound even better bypassing the fuse/s and fuse clips all together.

In fact while you’re at it bypass the branch circuit breaker in the electrical panel and tie the hot of the branch circuit ahead of the main breaker. After all the fewer the electrical connections, the better.

lol

Of course I was not suggesting any such thing as bypassing fuses or fuse clips. The debate here is whether the fuse must be UL listed or not. Just because you can come up with some screwball example such as bypassing fuses doesn’t actually prove anything. And in view of the fact that aftermarket fuses, even when not UL rated, are in fact safe you’d have to be pretty hardheaded not to use them.

tootles
jea48
4,323 posts
 


geoffkait said:
Let’s see, should I use a non UL rated fuse and get better sound or use UL rated fuse and get worse sound? What to do, what to do?

lol

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

jea48 responded:
Hell, why stop there. The equipment will probably sound even better bypassing the fuse/s and fuse clips all together.

In fact while you’re at it bypass the branch circuit breaker in the electrical panel and tie the hot of the branch circuit ahead of the main breaker. After all the fewer the electrical connections, the better.

lol


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


geoffkait responed:
Of course I was not suggesting any such thing as bypassing fuses or fuse clips. The debate here is whether the fuse must be UL listed or not. Just because you can come up with some screwball example such as bypassing fuses doesn’t actually prove anything. And in view of the fact that aftermarket fuses, even when not UL rated, are in fact safe you’d have to be pretty hardheaded not to use them.

tootles


geoffkait said:
"The debate here is whether the fuse must be UL listed or not."

NO, what is at issue here is if an audio grade fuse, that is being sold to the unknowing consumer, has been tested and listed by any third party testing laboratory. Period!



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