[charmerci]

Yeah, you're right. It makes much more sense to stay in the house 24/7 so you can unplug equipment when you hear thunder than it does to purchase a well made surge protector. 

In addition to a surge suppressor, I also unplug it when I go out. Look, if a TV blows (which I rarely watch anyway) I can always go down to the store and get a replacement, if my AVA equipment blows, then it's ship it and wait for it to be repaired - so that's what 4-6 weeks without it....

No one is asking you to do the same.

[newzooreview]

No one is asking you to do the same.

Really? Because in your first post you are telling us that we're all too indolent to solve the problem without buying gadgets. That's your entire point. So you're not asking us to do anything, I suppose, except try and be as smart as you.

When you're home and the power company sends a surge down the line (rather than the thunder) then I hope you're fast enough to pull the plug.

[charmerci]

Really? Because in your first post you are telling us that we're all too indolent to solve the problem without buying gadgets. That's your entire point. So you're not asking us to do anything, I suppose, except try and be as smart as you.

When you're home and the power company sends a surge down the line (rather than the thunder) then I hope you're fast enough to pull the plug.

Read the original post - I said I pull the plug because no surge suppressor will protect  equipment from a lightning strike. IF I'm wrong with that - then correct me.

And no, there are a lot of incredibly smart people here - especially in the area of electronics.
You are reading far more in the original post than is in there.

Maybe I'm more paranoid about protecting my AVA equipment than most - so excuse me!

[martyo]

Hey Charlie, watch it!
                                                                       Hope it's all good with you!

[newzooreview]

In any event, back to the topic. I woke up in the middle of the night in March of this year to blinding flashes outside of my bedroom window. Each flash illuminated the yard and neighboring house like a Hollywood floodlight. The main power line to my house had a hidden crack in the insulation apparently, and it had started to arc against a gas pipe (fortunately no longer in service). Fortunately, everything was plugged into surge protectors, but my concern is the MOV issue.

I have been using elect-spec "kleen-line" surge protectors since Dave at PI Audio thought they did no harm in front of the CustomBUSS that he put together for me. However, I just opened one up and found MOVs inside (for some reason I thought they didn't use MOVs).

In addition to marketing claims from ZeroSurge and others, I found a safety report issued by the Department of Energy that suggests that MOVs can cause fires when they have reached the end of their usable life (absorbed to many surges)   http://www.hanford.gov/rl/uploadfiles/LL_2006-RL-HNF-0016.pdf

Do I change out the elect-spec surge protectors since they've likely absorbed a fair number of surges at this point? Elect-spec's website appears to be down, so I expect that they are out of business.

The ISOBAR that Wayner is using looks very similar to what I have.

I could get one of the ZeroSurge outlets, but does anyone have experience using them with a power amplifier? The spec sheet provided by the manufacturer says they are designed to protect switch mode power supplies, and my amp and preamp have linear power supplies.

I'm inclined to go with the Tripp Lites and just change them out every few years to keep the MOVs fresh. Seems silly, but that appears to be the best route given that the MOVs wear out and there's no easy way to know when they are no longer effective (and potentially pose a fire hazard).

[dlparker]

          ----------
I'm inclined to go with the Tripp Lites and just change them out every few years to keep the MOVs fresh. Seems silly, but that appears to be the best route given that the MOVs wear out and there's no easy way to know when they are no longer effective (and potentially pose a fire hazard).

          ----------

Hey that would explain something (maybe).  Couple of years ago I kept smelling this strange chemical smell starting sometime in the wee hours of the morning (no, not what some of you may be thinking).  I was afraid maybe somebody in an adjacent apartment was maybe "cooking" something.  I was mostly worried about fire/explosion, but after a few nights I woke up to the sound of my APC SmartUPS 1200 beeping like crazy and the smell stronger than ever.  I went into the room where it was and it was not only beeping with all the lights flashing on the front, it was glowing from inside.  I pulled the plug immediately, turned it off,  made sure it wasn't actually on fire, and plugged everything back in to a surge supressor and went to bed.  I moved out of the apartment end of May/beginning of June and there was a very noticeable gray spot on the wall where it had been.   I'm surprised I didn't notice it at the time...

[Wayner]

My this has been a busy thread while I was gone. I did a little study and almost all surge protectors use MOVs. Yes, they are the beat-up dummy, kind of like a voltage regulator. Voltage too high, MOV sucks it up and makes heat. Too many concussions and it's lights out. Fire starter? Well if you had a direct hit by lightening, that would be a real fire starter.

The product I mentioned is ETL listed and Tripp-lite is a big company. The real problem I think we face here is what the threshold of products are. Don't kid your self, nothing will stop a direct lightening strike. That's about 5 million volts and several times hotter then the surface of the sun.

Surge protectors are suppose to be the front line of protection to your other equipment. If it takes a hit, throw the thing away, it only cost $50 and it probably saved all of your other valuable equipment. If it's in protect mode, it's taken a hit. That was it's job. Sorry it can't take repeat blows, but neither could Fraser.

My rule is, surge takes a hit, oh shit, time to buy a new one.

Problem solved.

Wayner 

[srb]

My rule is, surge takes a hit, oh shit, time to buy a new one.

Tripp Lite is a large company manufacturing a vast array of power products, and they seem to be well-built electrical commodities with fair pricing, in contrast to "audiophile pricing".
 
Steve

[satfrat]

My rule is, surge takes a hit, oh shit, time to buy a new one.

Problem solved.

Wayner 

Question,,, how would you know if your surge protector has taken a surge hit from either a storm or directly from the power company?    Does the surge protector you use effect the sound of your system in an negative way? Some say MOV protectors do just that. I've never used one myself so I wouldn't know or even have an opinion but if I were to get one, I wouldn't want to be replacing it each time I hear a thunderbummer and I surely wouldn't want to degrade you system audio.
 
A few years ago, Balanced Power Technologies Chris Hoff was recommending a particular company's home surge protector's products but I can't remember the name.
 
Cheers,
Robin

[dlparker]

I've used both Tripp-Lite and APC.  I'm still unpacking from a move (my LAST one, I hope, at least where I'm doing ANY of the carrying and not one of the items moved), and I may still have one or maybe two of those Tripp-Lite squarish voltage regulators packed somewhere.  I'm pretty sure I threw one of them away but I haven't gone through everything yet.  It was maybe ten years old and had brown spots on the side I assume from heat buildup.  I've got two Tripp-Lite rack mount isobar surge protectors, one 15-amp and the other 20-amp.  I pulled the 15 out of service and replaced it with the 20 after the 15 started acting up at a gig.  I tried to use the 15 at home (plugged my PC into it) but it started making a "sizzling" sound, and I can't even remember if the PC powered up.  Once I figured out where the sound was coming from I pulled the plug on it, but I've still got it.  It looks pretty simple inside and I hate to throw any rack mount stuff away.

The one remaining APC unit I've got is a SmartUPS 2200 tower unit, about 14 years old, I think.  It's just been put back into service after having the batteries replaced.  It's plugged in but I haven't plugged anything into it yet because I'm waiting to have a 220 circuit split into two 110s.  My local IT eqpt distributor (keep in mind I'm POST IT career and still learning to say "About computers?  I know nossing...") buys the batteries and resells them.  I can get them cheaper myself, but I've know the guy for years, he knows his stuff, and when I take it to his place I know they'll give the thing a complete checkup before they sell me the batts.  He only deals with APC, though, because he says their designs are in general the least proprietary and easiest to repair. 

I think either the APC or Tripp-Lite stuff would be fine, as long as you've adjusted to the fact that decent power protection is going to cost a lot more than the typical 10-15 dollar Wally World unit.

As for coloring your sound or affecting the sound of the system, I think this issue's been pretty well put to rest, by Frank among others.  As I understand it, what colors the sound of the system are the spurious harmonics generated by AC, and the problem is how to keep them out of the signal circuits. 

I may sound like I know what I'm talking about, but I really haven't the slightest idea.  If I'm totally FOS I'd appreciate anyone pointing that out.  Wait a minute.  That's already been established.  If any of the opinions I've expressed here are inaccurate or just total BS, I hope people will point that out.

[newzooreview]

My this has been a busy thread while I was gone. I did a little study and almost all surge protectors use MOVs. Yes, they are the beat-up dummy, kind of like a voltage regulator. Voltage too high, MOV sucks it up and makes heat. Too many concussions and it's lights out. Fire starter? Well if you had a direct hit by lightening, that would be a real fire starter. [snip]

Wayner 

It's starting to look more and more to me as if the MOVs are a definite hazard. You don't know when they've taken a hit, and they can overheat and melt. Below is an account from another thread on Audiocircle. ( http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=80997.20 )

I'm starting to lean strongly towards non-MOV surge protectors. I'm reading up on the zerosurge ones, but would be interested to learn about other non-MOV brands.

I have had a Monster home theater surge unit for several years.  Looks impressive with lights and meter, but is somewhat cheap inside.  A couple years ago we had a strong weather event here, and power was going up and down a lot.  I finally fired up my standby generator. which is surely not very clean and only makes 110-115 VAC when loaded.  That day my Monster "protected" my system (which was off anyway) by blowing out a MOV.  The MOV caught fire.  I followed the smell and unplugged the unit in time to save it, aside from some internal scorching.  I had previously opened it to replace the outlets with hospital-grade, so there was no warranty coverage.  I replaced the MOV for about $0.50 and am back in business, but I have never since been comfortable with MOV protection.  Depending on the sophistication of the surge device, a blown MOV might not prevent the supply of power to clients, but it negates any protection, so you might be operating without protection and not even know it.

[JimJ]

I hate to sound like a broken record, but: http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=p3907.m570.l1313&_nkw=surgex&_sacat=See-All-Categories

No MOVs

[Wayner]

There is a red LED that indicates "surge protect" when it takes a hit. HTI uses hundreds and hundreds of these things, if not a thousand, and there have been zero incidents. These are used on million dollar machines.

Wayner

[Wayner]

Let's get back to the fire thing a minuet. If the NFPA thought that the device was that dangerous, they could easily have other government agencies do a recall on it. UL, the NEC and NFPA, share many platforms (and even talk to each other) on the listing of many devices, including this one. There is no doubt in my mind that the MOVs are a "kamikaze" device, made to take the hit, as I've said before. I just don't think you are going to see huge voltage surges in residential voltages, unless some dope hooks up a wrong transformer. In that case, anything else is prone to fire as well. A typical 3A power switch couldn't take a 600 volt surge, it would "start on fire" if it was on. BTW, I may have failed to mention, but then you should have looked it up, that the device has a circuit breaker (resettable).

Wayner

[satfrat]

BPT uses the EP-2000, custom made from Environmental Potentials as an upgrade option. HERE's more info from the Environmental Potentials website about their EP technology. 
 
Cheers,
Robin

[Wayner]

I still have a case number with Tripp-lite. Would you all like me to call them tomorrow and talk about your MOV fears? I'm also going to ask them how many units they have in the field (I can't even guess), but am quite sure they may be the largest supplier.

Wayner

[satfrat]

I still have a case number with Tripp-lite. Would you all like me to call them tomorrow and talk about your MOV fears? I'm also going to ask them how many units they have in the field (I can't even guess), but am quite sure they may be the largest supplier.

Wayner

Actually I've been reading tons of MOV posts from the last 10 years on the subject (thanks to Google) and the majority of the internet talk has been against the use of MOV surge protectors in audio systems. This topic seems to have been hashed out for quite some time now. I've never had a cause to use one so it's something I've never looked into myself. But then again I lost a 2 year old DirecTv HD DVR reciever last year from a power outage. Never lost any audio gear tho,,,,,,, yet. 
 
Cheers,
Robin

[Wayner]

I also noticed that PS Audio, Furman use MOVs. I think that the fear is perhaps way over the top. Then I also might add, then if you are totally scared of MOVs, curl up into the fetal position and go naked with your power. I think it's a good product, if you don't, then don't buy one.

Wayner

[satfrat]

I also noticed that PS Audio, Furman use MOVs. I think that the fear is perhaps way over the top. Then I also might add, then if you are totally scared of MOVs, curl up into the fetal position and go naked with your power. I think it's a good product, if you don't, then don't buy one.

Wayner

You're just tooo funny Wayner,,,,, 

[newzooreview]

I hate to sound like a broken record, but: http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=p3907.m570.l1313&_nkw=surgex&_sacat=See-All-Categories

No MOVs

That looks 2-3x the cost of the zerosurge, and I already have an RFI/EMI filter, so it may not be the best for my needs (but it might be good for someone who's looking for surge protection and some form of power conditioning).