Elfix Polarity Tester. Is this taking it too far ?

[AlfaGTV]

"Is this taking it too far?"
No, No, No and another big No!

One might be satisfied with the thought that manufacturers have designed their machinery using correct phasing, and similarly so concerning the cable manufacturers. This is not the case, there are quite a lot of machinery where phasing is inverted. For you brits, there should not be any issues as you have mains cabling with defined phasing. Here in Sweden the wall socket plugs is reversible, which means phasing is essential.
And if you cant hear the difference between a correctly phased system you can stop spending money on equipment, and buy more music instead!
The difference will baffle you, surely!

Phase checkers can be had for a couple of quid, and besides music will be the best value for money you can find in this business!

Br Mike

[DSJR]

AC mains may well be AC, but the input to many CD players with fig8 sockets isn't entirely symmetrical. It used to be easy to try unmarked fig 8 cables one way, the other way, and easily hear a slight difference, which was repeatable. The "best" way was basically with the brown posistive lead feeding the pin on the player which connected to the mains fuse side.

Maybe with a more blase attitude these days, I wouldn't bother, but at the time, I'd just ask the customers to humour me and give it a try

[Reffc]

I've just read this and I'm gobsmacked. Isn't enough that Russ Andrews was taken to the cleaners for basically marketing lies previously; now he seems to have taken things one step too far by encouraging people to play with their mains wiring. I wonder how many people will end up frying kit or burning their houses down after reversing polarity but taking the live wire out of the fused part of the plug? As has been said, if there is a fault on the live wire and the circuit polarity is reversed, then there is no fused protection on that kit.

There is also no evidence provided to support his claims, but then that's nothing new but actively encouraging people to mess around with mains voltages is insane. Don't do it peeps.

I think that Mark's rather colourful response said it all.