Let me begin by saying that I am not a “fuse denier.” I have heard the difference that fuses made in my preamp and power amp (BHK pre and 250).
But in the case of a Power Plant (I own a P12), I cannot wrap my head around this. A number of folks here have noticed changes, mostly improvements, when upgrading the fuse in a Power Plant (and I am in no way questioning what they hear). But the whole point of a PP is to separate the incoming, poor-quality AC from what gets sent to the connected components by regenerating a perfect sine wave with steady voltage, low THD, etc. If the regenerator board is really doing its job, it shouldn’t matter what’s on the incoming side — including a fuse. Or am I missing something here?
I suspect the reason is that a hood fuse reduces noise, giving the power plant less work to to do, so that work it does will be more successful. Power filtering inside electronics is good, for example, but as Garth Powell says, you can’t get it all. I think that’s the underlying principle; you can clean the power, but don’t assume you’re getting all of the noise eliminated. So adding the fuse reduces some noise as well. Perhaps it’s a cumulative effect?
the production of a potential difference across an electrical conductor when a magnetic field is applied in a direction perpendicular to that of the flow of current.
That thin little wire through which all the current to the gear flows…P12 no different.
Now what happens if the conductive qualities of that tiny wire could be significantly
improved as in the case of the M1 or Purple fuse…
The results would be an increased ability of the P12 to more quickly track and supply the dynamic musical demands. This alone would bring a significant improvement to the
sound quality and sound staging a system could provide.
This worked for my P5, P12 and now P15 as it does for many of us here on this forum.
Audio Magic and Synergistic Research are terrific. Don’t forget QSA either, as they, too are excellent products. With QSA it appears the more you spend the more graphene features. I’ve had excellent success with their Light Blue, Yellow and Violet fuses. Directly compared to SR Orange and Purple I found QSA to be more detailed and open, where the SR were more “sublime” in the midrange. I have a mix of SR and QSA and I’m stoked.
I mention this because the cheapest QSA Black fuse is around $30 if I remember correctly. Considering the cost of the P12 it would seem and excellent way to lose not much on the experiment?
I think power cords makes much more difference powering a regenerator, only thing is one of the best for this purpose is a AQ Dragon HO and can cost up to $10k.
This makes sense. It is (if I understand correctly) more or less what RonP was getting at when he pointed out that a PowerPlant is similar to an amplifier, whose sound can certainly be affected by a fuse change.
Thanks for sharing your experience! I am using a Shunyata Copperhead from the wall to my P12. It’s an old cable I’ve had for years but is better than a cheap stock cord.
A regenerator ‘improves’ your incoming AC by (let’s say) a factor 10. Thus everything that happens before the regenerator (separate phase, separate group, audiophile outlet, powercord AND the fuse) has a significant influence. Better in is even better out!
I started this thread because I was having trouble figuring out how a fuse could improve a system whose components, like mine, are run off a PowerPlant. (I had previously heard improvements with fuse changes in my preamp ad BHK250.)
Today I replaced the stock fuse in my P12 with an SR Purple. Out of the box, with no break-in, I heard: more lifelike timbre of instruments; more body on instruments like cello; better separation of instruments; and faster/more accurate starting and stopping. In one passage from Mozart piano concerto #16, I could hear that two instruments were playing in unison, where before I heard one undifferentiated set of pitches. I heard some other items in the mix that I had not been aware of before, but improved timbre and body were the two biggest differences.
I suppose it’s kind of like going from a Model T to a Porsche. But there is no question that the fuse had a beneficial effect. We’ll see what happens after the fuse gets some hours on it.