Fuses ( I’ve never tried them for sq improvement)

[Barry]

Any pressured interface will relieve itself to an extent with time, especially a screw onto a soft material, and copper is malleable.

In my distribution board, made of wood, I have increased the size of the 'clamping' screws, to increase the area, and use stainless ones with stainless tubing halves against the wires to increase the area of contact. They do still loosen but to a lesser extent. De-Oxit is a help. It is IMO worse generally to tin the wires because they are then more prone to being cut than separate strands are.

Is this a distribution board you have made yourself Dennis? And is the 'wood' providing the insulation? If it is, I hope you are using a hard wood.

Would it be possible to see some photos of your distribution board?

[Pharos]

I have two, one for the Hi-Fi and another for the studio rack. They are made from high quality plywood, with liberal applications of polyurethane. Insulation is not a direct concern, the sockets being Duraplug 'rubber'.

I would post pictures but I am a muppet with that.

[Barry]

One of these?

https://www.mkelectric.com/Documents...e/Duraplug.pdf

[Pharos]

No, sorry I am having a bad period; I plugged in my AVI S200 today and the power supply went puff.
This after my ATC pre and power amp developed a fault last week and went back to them.

Mine are plywood with screw on 5amp Duraplug sockets in all positions but one, that other being a Duraplug 13 amp to allow further extensions of low current equipment to be added, by adding one of those you show in the link.

BTW they self destruct, the screw mountings come off. Plastic 4mm threaded 'barrels' have to be superglued in place and ground perspex peppered onto the joint to beef it up. I have three 0.1microF caps across the three terminals as a filter in my wooden boards. For the studio I only use 13 amp Duraplugs because the currents are so small.

[Barry]

Ah, so the mains connectors are BS546 3-pin 5A type. That's OK, Duraplug use rubber for the insulation.

I was more concerned that you were using wood as the insulation, and whilst dry wood can have a resistivity of around 10¹⁴ to 10¹⁶ Ohm.m, (compared to hard rubber with a resistivity of 10¹³ Ohm.m), I wouldn't want to depend on that for anything related to the mains; especially as it could absorb moisture over time and start to track.

[Pharos]

Yes, I love the 5A round pins because the chances of getting good contact with them is much higher than with a 13A square pin; only a degree off a right angle, and the contact area is infinitely small.

[oldson]

dont believe that report.
never will believe that any fuse change can be picked up by the human ear.

then again i feel the same about so called directional cables and cable burn in!

imo, "burn in" is our ears and brains perception as they "get used" to the sound.

i do believe that any circuit using caps will have a burn in period, but thats it.