[beat]

Hey all,
Finally starting my speaker boxes. What I'm doing is building a tri amped system with independent boxes for each driver. It will be an electronically crossed 3 way. My question is, Should I use any sort of cap or fuse in each box? I've heard it is a good idea to use a cap on the tweeter for safety. How would you guys go about it?
thanks, beat

[_scotty_]

beat, you might try a 0.5amp fast blow on the tweeter,1amp fast blow on the midrange,and 2amp fast blow on the woofer. Bypass the the fuses with a .47 uFd foil and film cap at 100v or higher.  If you pop the fuse on the woofer you may have to use a larger fuse. To be super safe you could use a .22uFd cap to bypass the tweeter fuse. This would increase its protection from out of band signals resulting from amplifier oscillation at ultrasonic frequencies.

[beat]

Thanks Scotty,
So, what youre saying is to run the caps in parallel right next to the fuse? Is that just to help signal transfer basically or is that more for protection too?

[_scotty_]

beat, fuses as a rule don't sound good. They are made of less than perfect conductors and have a tiny gauge wire that can act as a variable resistor to transient changes in current levels. The high quality capacitor provides a constant impedance path for the signal and its presence
 will generally mitigate any adverse effects from the fuse on the sound of the speaker. If the fuse blows the small value cap won't pass enough current to cause damage to the driver. I usually place the fuse in the ground leg. An incoming electrical waveform hits the driver first instead of the fuse and the speaker seems to sound a little cleaner. The audibililty the bypass cap is  dependent on the sonic quality of the drivers involved
in the speaker system.