[Mass. Wine Guy]

I received a pair of Ric's ground enhancers today and I just five minutes ago put them on the negative binding post of both my speakers. I'd turned my amp off to do this. When I tried to power it up by pushing the one and ony button to push there is on the front, it made its usual turning on sounds then quickly flipped on for a second, then off. Now nothing happens.

Did I break my amplifier? What should I do?

Any help greatly appreciated.

[TrungT]

^^^^^
What amp are you using?
I would unplug the amp, remove the GE, double check all connections, to make sure not thing touching each other, plug back the amp and see what happen.
Hope that help.

[Mass. Wine Guy]

No, it doesn't power up at all. Oh well. Easy come, easy go.

[TrungT]

Have you check the fuse?

[Mass. Wine Guy]

Excellent point, Trung. I'll look at it and see.

[Don_S]

Don't just look.  Sometimes a fuse can blow but not show.  You need to test the fuse for continuity.

Excellent point, Trung. I'll look at it and see.

[TrungT]

^^^^^
+1

[Mass. Wine Guy]

My amp is up and running again. I bought a new 7 amp fuse because I could not for the life of me locate a slow blow 8 amp fuse. I learned a lot, such as where the fuse is on the Arte Forma, how to change it how the ground enhancers are supposed to be installed.

I'm keeping an extra fuse on hand, of course. This gets me thinking again about any benefits, or not, of expensive "audio grade" fuses. It certainly looks like a good way for those marketing such fuses to make a lot of money.

Thank you for your suggestions and support. What's continuity in a fuse mean?

Sorry I forgot to answer the question. I have an Arte Forma integrated amp.

[tabrink]

"Thank you for your suggestions and support. What's continuity in a fuse mean?"



Ken
Think continuous! The fuse element is continuous and not severed, shorted, shunted or melt..
A continuity meter measures the fuse from end to end to see if the element is continuous and not broken.

[JakeJ]

What is meant by "continuity" is if we place the probes of our meter (this is a piece of test equipment such as this (http://www.fluke.com/Fluke/usen/Digital-Multimeters/Fluke-77-IV.htm?PID=56126), one on each end, then we should read 0 ohms or a very small number if the meter is capable, i.e. 0.001 ohms if the fuse element (the little wire or ribbon of metal inside the glass envelope) is good.  If a fuse is "blown" or has opened due to overload then the element will have burned or melted and is no longer going to pass voltage and current through it.  Our meter will read "OL" or open loop.  The fuse will no longer pass voltage and current through it and the circuit is effectively dead.
I give you all this in detail because as it was stated earlier you can't always just look at a fuse and see that has blown.  Some fuses may blow inside the caps and you just don't know for sure so you test it to make absolutely sure.  This has bitten me on the butt before and not just troubleshooting my audio gear but at work too.  I always test a fuse unless it clearly has burn marks inside the glass, usually accompanied by spatters of the melted metal in with the burn marks.

This all sounds kinda like overkill but when a line is down at my plant it is costing us anywhere from ~$8K to $20K an hour for downtime and it is all due to a 5 cent fuse.  There have been instances where the electrician on duty missed a blown fuse for an entire shift and when asked if he tested the fuse for continuity the answer was "No, it looked fine to me" you can be sure that person got a couple of extra days off without pay so he could think about it.

Hope this helps but if it adds confusion then let me know and I'll try to explain it better.

[TrungT]

M.W.G
So glad you got the amp up and singing.