[NeilBlanchard]

I have had my B&K ST-140 since the late 1980's and it has an issue with the speaker protection fuses: they are causing intermittent distortion, because of loose contact in the panel mounted bayonet holders. I had stretched out the springs, and that got them working again. But after 5+ months, the issue is back.

So, my questions are:

Do I replace the fuse holders?

Or replace the fuses with a solder in place (if there is an equivalent)?

Do I use a conductive grease on the contacts in the holder?

Another issue is the two original fuses a labeled differently:

4A 250V 312
4A  32V  311

They look quite similar - which one is the correct fuse?

I like this amp - I am using it to drive the stunning and super rare Linaeum TLS tweeters in my LT1000 speakers, so I want to keep these safe above all else. My fallback is to buy a Schiit Audio Aegir (assuming it sounds good).

[timind]

For a few years I ran a modified Hafler amp in my system. When I modded the amp, I also bypassed the speaker fuses. Yeah, there are risks with this, but I never had a problem.

[NeilBlanchard]

That thought had occurred to me as well - a long time ago, when I did some minor mods, and again now with this situation, it is tempting. The Linaeum tweeters are paramount, though.

It is not that the fuses could protect from all problems, I realize. Years ago, with my previous speakers, I was having issues with my preamp (I think - or it might have been bad interconnects?) and I blew out the woofer on one speaker, and the fuses didn't blow.