I agree that bypassing a fuse takes a step towards unsafety, so i will keep the two main 7A fuses in place. But for the other seven small amperage fuses...I’ve bought a few 6mm dia. copper rods from aliexpress and aim to whip up some small copper fuse replacements.
I’ve restored my amp with all new resistors, diodes, capacitors, and all of the power supply transistors, plus i listen at a quiet volume for only short amounts of time. I don’t feel that i am putting the power amplifier (Yamaha PC2002) under any stress at all, and it always remains cool, so i feel safe bypassing the internal fuses. I planned on using the copper dummy fuses in case i want to sell the amp and easily revert back. But who knows...i kind of like the idea of removing the fuse holders and just soldering a thick gauge copper into their places.
@ an above poster, the Nelson Pass amplifier you linked is one he designed for the DIY community, so yes it does have fuses. But you’ll see that there are other of this designs that don’t have fuses, for the very same audio-degrading reasons that have been mentioned in this thread.
I don’t claim to have any revealing system. But by taking noise reduction measures, one step at a time, from different areas of your audio chain, me or anyone can systematically sensitize their system such that if a fly lands on a wire and takes a crap, while you’re listening to music, you may jump back and say "wow what the hell was that?" or "wow, i’m hearing things in the music i never heard before!"
