Sorry Simon, I typed AM when I meant MW!
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Just out of interest… does anybody have any idea of roughly what import duty would be charged on a Farad super 3, and then there is 20% vat on the original cost + that import duty. The duty rate seems to be the subject of some kind of mystical coding!
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Duty to the UK should be 0%:
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Ah, okay… thanks. So just VAT… hmmm 
I paid 20% customs duty on my speaker parts from Denmark a little over a year ago. Paid in Euros for the parts, so effectively worked out that the price I paid in euros equated to pounds!
Customs duty, or VAT?
Customs, the parts had no VAT
If you’re looking at the Farad site it says this:
“EU taxes will be added in the checkout. If your shipping address is outside of Europe, the taxes will be removed”
So you’ll pay the price in euros you see in your cart, then 20% customs duty when it comes into the country. It’s quite easy, you get an email with payment methods.
At least that’s how it worked for me.
Around £100 - been there, done that. FedEx will pay it on your behalf and then chase you for it.
Is that the import duty or vat, or combined? Just going through the customs regs I reckon a power supply is 0% duty, but then 20% vat still. Does that make sense?
Bought mine second hand in the pink place. No duty, no VAT, and a good deal!
There are a couple in the other auction place that are not so cheap.
I can only see one at the moment and it’s the wrong voltage, and so close to the new price that it’s not worth thinking about.
I’m pretty sure it was a import duty tax - £96.96 to be exact.
Yes, getting the correct voltage at a sensible price is a challenge. I was looking for a while and then I got a tip off on here!
One can send the Farad back to the factory to change voltage too. I believe they charge around 100EUR.
I know it is a bit more expensive but the Hypsos Ferrum power supply looks interesting, with dial in your own voltage? Not seen any comments on here.
Keces Audio also offers voltage change
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This is a fascinating thread.
My own experience relates to the use of a LPS on my BT Smart Hub 2. I will warn any sensitive souls now that this is s very strange tale. Some readers may well find the results distressing and beyond comprehension. I know I do, but I have learned to come to terms with it. Those with less than open minds should probably stop reading now.
Some time ago now I replaced the stock SMPS with a LPS from MCRU. This was a real ‘wow!’ moment - much as @NigelB. Just about everything got better, and I do mean much better. If I had paid around £1K for this effect then I would have thought it money very well spent. It actually cost me around £300.
So a real result then? No - unfortunately not. After a while ( weeks) I gradually found myself becoming more and more uncomfortable with the sound. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but all was not well. Almost like the effect I got many years ago when my LP12 was drifting out of alignment (which it did an awful lot!). Suddenly listening to music wasn’t the fun it should be.
So I decided to put the stock SMPS back. Hey presto! Things sounded much much better! All the speed and PRAT was back! Music was fun fun fun again!
So how could this be - what was going on here? I really don’t know, but I put the LPS carefully back in its box and stowed it away for - well, ‘future use’.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I recently upgraded my Chord S6 mains block to an M6. All my system components are plugged into this. This left the S6 block free so I used it to plug in the SMPS’s for my router, fibre box and EE8 switch. A nice improvement in the music.
Out of sheer curiosity I decided to re-instate the LPS on the router - this now being plugged into the S6 block. Again - a real WOW! moment. Much, much better! And then, over the next few days this time, the same decline to the point where I re-introduced the stock SMPS, which now sounded easily and clearly very superior.
So I’ve now reverted back to the SMPS.
No comment here. Just confusion and frustration that the very real improvement I noted on both occaisons didn’t last.
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Some LPS struggle keeping the voltage at target when they get some current load and some equipment are more sensitive to drifting voltage. I changed from SMPS to LPS on my router but ended up preferring SMPS there. I guess there is no truth here. Trial and error.
Also noticed LPS are sensitive to power cables used and that it’s not the expensive cable that always performs the best.
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