I just placed an order for both tungsten and molybdenum rod of 99.95% purity. I should be getting those late next week and then probably will have them cut to size by the first of the following week. Hopefully, I can have a reasonably thorough review of all the slugs I've tried around Thanksgiving. Since they're the same size as the Swiss Fuse Box sluggos, my findings should also apply to those more safety-minded owners.
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tksteingraber: I'm delighted to hear that! Yeah, for me, the silver has been a very large improvement over the copper slugs and they actually sound kinda warm in my system. Maybe that's just compared to the titaniums although I wouldn't call those bright, maybe sunny but not bright. I should have graphite, molybdenum, and tungsten to experiment with around Thanksgiving. I would NEVER have thought I could get this level of sonic improvement for such a miniscule investment. And thanks for not calling me an idiot. That sure got old quick. Lol!
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tweak1: contact Golden State Silver and they will cut them to length for you. I actually told them I might be steering some business their way for this purpose. They sell on ebay and had a listing just for 2 of the slug precut and it was less than $45 for the pair. Probably cheaper if you bought rod yourself but they did a great job, much better than the machine than cut my copper and titanium rods
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tksteingraber: I've been meaning to do a write-up on all the slugs I have on hand but just haven't had the time or energy to really get into it yet. At the moment, I have copper, silver, titanium, tungsten, and molybdenum. I recently found that American Elements of Los Angeles has titanium alloys incorporating either palladium or platinum. I'm hugely interested in these, but the company hasn't responded to any of my email inquiries and the phone calls I've place always end up with me hanging up on their answering machine.
Do you know if anyone has tried the rhodium plated slugs from Verafiaudio?
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steakster: Welcome to the sluggos club! Yeah, it's kinda mind-blowing just how much of an improvement is wrought by subbing a solid slug in place of a fuse. And the variation in sound from the different metals is much more than I would have anticipated. Silver is a great choice all-around. I'm really hoping to try the titanium alloys from American Elements mentioned above although I'm guessing the
50% titanium/50% platinum will be well outside of my range but the 95% titanium/ 5% palladium should work very nicely (if I can ever get ahold of the company).
Will you be sticking with silver slugs, or do you plan to experiment a bit? It's crazy how little this costs and the improvements gained. Best of luck with it!
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larryi: I'm not much of a DIYer but I think you have a good idea. May I send you a slug of a TBD material and you can try this for yourself? I would be quite interested in your findings
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lemonhaze: Did you try any other slugs than the copper? In my experience, copper is, by far, the least impressive. The silver was quite an improvement in pretty much every way I find important, and titanium was quite a bit ahead of the silver in the way it images and precisely it does so. I'm not saying that the Ti slug has laser focus, rather, it makes everything else sound a bit blurry by comparison. I screwed up an ordered 3/8" molybdenum rod but have the correct replacement on the way. Really curious to hear this and tungsten next week. Thanks
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tksteingraber: I biamp my speakers as well but haven't installed a slug in the bass amp (D-Sonic) as I've had it go into protection mode a few times without really being pushed so not sure what's going on but don't want to take a chance. What are you hearing with your subs with the silver slugs in place? And please let us know how the Swiss fusebox compares to the slugs direct.
And I'm having trouble getting the correct molybdenum rod. I accidentally order 3/8" rather than 3/16" and then the seller sent out a replacement after I shipped the 3/8" back. That arrived today and it's obviously smaller than 3/16" so.... we'll see.
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tksteingraber: so, to use the SFB, you need an extra power cord? Do you think this could be causing the slight reduction in fidelity or the box itself? Will you be trying the rhodium sluggo when available? With the holiday causing a back up in work, the CNC machine shop won't be done with my molybdenum and tungsten slugs until late next week!! That should exacerbate my audiophile neurosis even further.
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rx8man: This sounds very promising. How does it compare to the titanium on inner detail and image placement? And did you try pure silver? I'm supposed to be getting the tungsten and molybdenum slugs tomorrow. I'm going to end up with a nice big stash of sound options! Appreciate you travelling this path as well.
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Will do although I have a lot of stuff, mostly that which I don't want to mess with, coming up so that will likely be a project in the unknown future. Please post any more experiences you have a well and thanks!
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steakster: I picked up the titanium rod from McMaster-Carr. You can probably find purer rod elsewhere and make sure you get the 99% titanium as there are many alloys out there, that is unless you get something like the platinum or palladium alloys. And I was very curious about the cables using tungsten, but I've found that I like the molybdenum much better. It's not quite as focused as the tungsten but has just as much detail and sounds smoother, sweeter, more organic. I'm thinking about getting some titanium wire and molybdenum wire and mixing them to make a power cord. That's what I've done with the slugs in my system, 1 titanium in the DAC, and moly slugs in the transport and amp. It's the best combination I've tried so far.
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erik_squired: no, that was rude of me and that is not my intention. But I did request these kinds of comments not be included. We all know that this can be dangerous, bypassing the component fuses, and, as adults, we will make our own decisions. You could start another thread decrying the stupidity of some audiophiles and the dangers of such activities. Again, I don't wish to be rude.
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mikelavigne: that sounds incredible!! I'd love to be able to do such but, as a renter, that's out of the question and probably nothing I could afford either. One of the great things about experimenting with slugs is the relatively low cost. I bought 2 99.99 solid silver slugs, with shipping from California to Indiana for less than $45 and they sound very good. Still, I'm rather envious of your solution!
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larryi---your suggestion does make the most sense, but I am having fun hearing the differences in the sounds the slugs produce. Honestly, I'm shocked at how much detail and how precisely in space titanium places individual sounds. There can be a strangeness to the way some mids are portrayed, which is why I'm interested in hearing other metals as slugs but the difference between having the stock fuse, or even the copper slug in my DAC, versus using the titanium slug is the kind of sonic difference I would expect from a MAJOR component upgrade.
erik_squires: duly noted (and ignored) again.
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Hey Jerry. Did you try out those titanium slugs I sent you yet? I'm talking with a manufacturer now about getting tungsten stock. I'm trying to not have to purchase a whole foot of it though. Thanks
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And for all the others, once again just NEEDING to tell me how incredibly stupid I am for bypassing the fuses to use slugs, let me ask you this, which do you think is more dangerous and likely to actually cause harm; listening to my stereo without fuses to protect the components, all plugged into an Equi-Core 1800 with its circuit breaker ready to kick out in things get too hinky or getting in your car and going for a drive? If we go back the 35 years I've been driving, I've been in 5 minor accidents and 2 of those were due to deer (natures stupidest creature). During that same time, I think I've blown 3 fuses, 2 of those in a big SET tube amp which I would never consider using slugs with. The other was in an early Threshold Stasis 2 amp, which was over 20 yrs old when I got it.
I'm not terribly concerned about going for a drive. I've been doing deliveries for the last 20+ yrs. I'm even less concerned about using my stereo sans fuses. But thanks for the concern
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Thank you carlsbad2 and tksteingraber for not being alarmists. I purchased the titanium rod when I bought my copper rod from McMaster-Carr, both for under $20 shipped and only another $30 for the machine shop to cut them down to 20mm lengths. This has been, by a huge margin, the biggest bang-for-the-buck audio improvement I've ever made.
It had been a while since I'd had the copper slugs in the system since the silver and titaniums are much more suited to my listening preference, so I just spent a couple hours going back and forth with either in my Bel Canto DAC 2.8. I presently have a titanium in the Bel Canto CDT-3 transport and a silver in the Red Dragon S-500. I would have swapped these around to, but both are in the back of the components and take a bit of digging to remove the fuse tray so my apologies for only swapping out the DAC slugs.
As would be expected, the copper has a warmer or fuller sound. This does come at the expense of inner detail but does smooth out some occasional brightness. Where I particularly notice the loss of inner detail is in decays as the copper sounds positively truncated in this regard. The silver is more open on top and there is a greater sense of the area around the instruments. The copper sounds a bit dumbed down. The copper also throws slightly but noticeably larger images while the silver has more precisely drawn and palpable images. If you like warm and fuzzy, then the copper is your slug but for me, there is no comparison, and I just can't have the coppers in knowing how much better it would sound with silver or titanium in there instead.
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I'm really not fond of the copper slugs at all. I thought them an improvement over the stock fuses but it's the silver and surprisingly, titanium slugs that really transformed my system. A quick story about this: my amp is a Red Dragon S-500. I have been using a single one in stereo mode for a few years now and recently acquired another at a shockingly low price. Upon arrival, I swapped it out with my original one to test and make sure it was working and sounding as it should given the exceptionally low price. Immediately I noticed something quite wrong and thought the amp wasn't working correctly. Everything sounded a bit opaque, and the highs were rolled off. Honestly, I was about to shoot the seller a probably beligerent email about the damaged amp when I remembered that the original Red Dragon was fitted with one of the solid silver slugs. I pulled the fuse tray out and installed a silver slug and PRESTO!!!! All was back to normal. That's the kind of improvement I get with the silver and titanium slugs. Of course, your system needs to be adequately resolving to get similar results, I would assume. Check with Golden State Silver for the silver slugs, less than $50 for 2. I really can't imagine as significant an improvement for what would be such a minimal investment.
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