I appreciate all the responses, and the effort to maintain courtesy despite strong opposition in terms of conclusions. Again, derision accomplishes little and unnecessarily alienates fellow audiophiles.
At the moment, as clearly as I can tell the tally is: 6 answers aligning more with "Gift" and 8 aligning more with "Snake Oil".
It's an interesting phenomenon that some have found only a particular fuse to win them over. If I'm not mistaken the bulk, if not all, fuses available to audiophiles are AC power fuses (But, I haven't researched all available aftermarket fuses for HiFi.) If someone has information otherwise, please correct me on this. :)
Another interesting phenomenon is that I haven't seen an instance yet of someone saying that adding too many fuses to the system was detrimental. It seems in most cases that those who agree with the efficacy of fuses are in the "more the better" camp.
Though I am not pushing the conversation in this direction, I would find it interesting to see what the breakdown is in terms of attitude toward fuses and attitude toward cables. I suspect that most who have tried fuses have found aftermarket cables efficacious, and most who feel fuses are snake oil have stayed with lower cost cables and or stock cables. It would seem to me that the two activities would hang together. We might also see a wide variance in total system cost as regards fuses. I would not be surprised to see systems in the $15K+ category using aftermarket fuses, while those in the $2-10K category would not. Imo, that has no bearing on the efficacy of fuses, but says more about the attitudes about it.
Thank you to all who have participated; I hope we see many more tallying up their experiences and opinions. :)
