Synergistic Red Fuse ...


I installed a SR RED Quantum fuse in my ARC REF-3 preamp a few days ago, replacing an older high end fuse. Uhh ... for a hundred bucks, this little baby is well worth the cost. There was an immediate improvement upon installation, but now that its broken in (yes, no kidding), its quite remarkable. A tightening of the focus, a more solid image, and most important of all for my tastes, a deeper appreciation for the organic sound of the instruments. Damn! ... cellos sound great! Much improved attack on pianos. More humanistic on vocals. Bowed bass goes down forever. Next move? .... I'm doing the entire system with these fuses. One at a time though just to gauge the improvement in each piece of equipment. The REF-75se comes next. I'll report the results as the progression takes place. Stay tuned ...

Any comments from anyone else who has tried these fuses?
oregonpapa

Showing 3 responses by auxinput

Well, I can understand that no fuse is better than fuse.  However, you are potentially setting yourself up for failure.  I'm sure you know that removing the fuse and hard-wiring will VOID any sort of manufacture warranty that you have.  The other thing you don't realize is that the fuse is meant to blow when the unit pulls more A/C current than is expected.  This can happen when you have huge inrush of current to the transformer.  However, it can also happen when there is a short somewhere in the circuit.  If the short causes significantly more current to be pulled in than expected, it can actually fry multiple elements in your circuit.  An example would be a preamp/DAC device that should not have a fuse higher than 1-2 amps.  If you remove the fuse and something shorts, you can cause more problems than just the shorted area.  Resistors blow, electrolytic caps blown, op amps, etc. etc. 

I have no doubt that it sounds better, but the risk is yours to take if you wish.  Not saying that your equipment will be fried by an uncommon short or circuit failure.  It's that 0.02% chance that something MIGHT happen.

Up to you.

@willgolf - thanks for the feedback on the PADIS and BLUE.  There could be a couple of things going on here.  One is that the tube amp may not be high resolution enough to reveal any slight differences between PADIS and BLUE (I'm not saying this is true, I'm only saying it is a theory).  In my experience, the very high resolution equipment can reveal differences.  In stuff that is lower resolution or warmer voiced, the differences between elements such as fuses or interconnects are more difficult to see and sometimes impossible.  Having no experience with your specific tube amp, I cannot be sure.

The other one is that, in my experience, the differences in fuses for amplifiers have much less impact than fuses in preamp/source equipment.  I think that part of it is the fuses in the amps have a larger internal fusewire (because of higher amp rating) and the nature of fuse composition has less influence in amps.  In any case, a fuse will still have an influence on an amplifier's sonic signature, it is just much less of an influence a fuse would have in a preamp/DAC.

The final option would be that there is no discernible difference between PADIS/Futurech and BLUE fuses.  I think more testing with different types of equipment would have to be done before we came to this conclusion.