Interesting (?) Amperage Measurements

[cantskienuf]

I moved my BrianGT LM3875 monoblock gainclones upstairs from the basement burn-in to the listening room. They keep sounding better and better, but I did find that they pick up AC line noise much moreso than my tube amps. I could hear noise when the ceiling fan is on or when the light dimmers are used. Consequently, it was time to build some AC line conditioners. Fortunately, I had previously acquired the parts to assemble line conditioners/surge protectors IAW the recipe offered by Jon Risch on his website. After spending a few hours boarding and soldering, my line noise is gone. Now, I thought that I was being conservative by building one unit for the Gainclones and one unit for my Bottlehead Foreplay and Toshiba 3960, but JR's website indicated that I should have gone further. So, to make sure I was not exceeding the capabilities of either my isolation transformer or the line conditioners, I decided to take actual line measurements. I took the measurements first from between the isolation transformer and the outlet and next from between the isolation transformer and the line conditioners so that I could see what different loads downstream caused the transformer to draw. Frankly, I was quite amazed that my audio equipment does not use nearly the amperage that I expected. I wanted to keep my draw on the iso tx at half its rated capacity of 4.3 amps and feared that I was exceeding that, only to find that I don't come anywhere near. When all gear is on, playing, and the volume is placed at the highest setting that I ever use (you know, the one you gradually get to when you've been doing serious listening for several hours while sipping frosty beverage?) the measurement would only occasionally get to 1.1 amps. What I found was that the Gainclones each draw .025 amps at rest, the Foreplay draws .027 amps at rest, the Toshiba draws .0485 amps when not turned on - .057 when turned on but not playing - and .069 when playing, the line conditioners each draw .0025 amps, and the iso tx itself draws .49 amps. Kinda' makes me wonder why I ran a dedicated 20 amp line. I thought it was an interesting exercise. Now if I build that 300B I've been thinking about.....