[GrimJosef]

As an example of the confusion, I recently had a very large valve amp in for service. It was fitted with an IEC C14 inlet and the instruction manual explicitly said that the amp was only to be used with the manufacturer's supplied IEC C13 mains lead. Unfortunately that lead hadn't made it as far as me. The amp's onboard mains fuse was rated F6.3A, which wouldn't provide overload protection for, say, a 5A-rated lead.

So in the spirit of playing by the rules I thought I'd order a suitably high-rated lead. I chose one from CPC, a reputable supplier - their order code PL14263. This is described, unambiguously you might have thought, as a 2.5m UK Plug to IEC C13 Socket Mains Lead, 10A Black - UKIEC10A2.5M and the description on its web page says its current rating is 10A.

The picture shows the item which turned up. Let's start with the IEC connector. This (blue ring) is stamped 10A. Good start. The cable (green ring) says 3 x 1.0mm2. According to Lucien's list further up that should also be fine for 10A. So far so good. But when I opened the fuseholder I found (yellow ring) a 5A fuse. Hmmm. And the stamp on the BS1363 plug (red ring) says 5/250, which I'd always understood to mean 5A, 250V.

So is my lead a 10A lead or is it really a 5A lead ? Maybe I should take this up with CPC. As it was I used it - the amp didn't draw nearly 5A of course - but I didn't leave it unattended.

Cheers,

GJ