Synergistic Red Fuse ...

I had a chance to flip by the Blacks in my DAC/Pre yesterday afternoon and had a night-time session after they’d settled in for a few hours. They’re now at about 170 hours total.

Wow. It was like the system had bolted awake after a nap. In this new orientation I’ll echo what some others have observed: _really low_ noise floor and black background. I was stunned to be able to follow cymbal decays for seconds longer than I ever thought possible.  Soundstage is pushed wider and brought 3-4 feet closer to provide a more front-row presentation, as if things are suddenly more close-mic’ed and revealing a little less of the room acoustic of the studio. Transient speed is fast, fast, fast. Bass has great heft and also great texture. The system is far more lively but not in a fatiguing way.

All this from the direction a fuse is turned. Who woulda figured? ;-)

Will come back with observations after another couple of sessions.

Hey folks

i was wondering how hard it would be to do the burn in of a fuse outside of the expensive equipment?  Many of us use tubes which have limited life and it seems a shame to waste some tube life on fuse burn in. In addition, burning in fuses outside the gear would allow for a better test of what the fuses can do because your first impression will be the best the fuse can do.

Would an external fuse holder with a battery ac oss the leads to get an amp or two across suffice?

adam

I have the Reds in my Amp, phono and DAC. I am cooking the Blacks now.

Someone has asked earlier in this thread but I don't see any answer: is the SR label on the fuses indicating direction? i.e. they are not randomly pasted.

For those who can observe the effect of the direction, do you notice any relation with the direction of the label? Do the label follow the direction of the current flow?

Just wonder if we can use the label (if it is indicating a direction) to determine the direction of inserting the fuses instead of just trying....

Thanks.

I my case, the clear winner is fuse seemingly reversed from current flow, such that incoming current sees the R side of the fuse.

Would an external fuse holder with a battery ac oss the leads to get an amp or two across suffice?

Household alkaline batteries would at best only last a few hours when supplying that much current, and in many cases less than an hour.  Also, you would need to have a resistor in series, to limit the current to an amount that is appropriate for the rating of the particular fuse, taking into account the internal resistance of the particular battery.

What might be reasonable to consider is using an AC-powered power supply, providing some reasonably low output voltage, wired to a suitable fuseholder in series with an appropriately chosen resistor.  In the case of a rail fuse (that would be conducting DC within a component) a power supply providing DC on its output should obviously be chosen.  In the case of a mains fuse, though, in the absence of a detailed technical understanding of what changes occur during the breakin process that are audibly significant (or even of how these fuses work their magic) I have no idea as to whether it would be best for the output of that supply to be low voltage AC or low voltage DC, or if it would make any difference either way.

Regards,
-- Al