Yiangos - Some answers might be found here. Maybe the lightning strike created a surge to your system which melted the ground wire and the electricity took the path of least resistance (left channel?), then the breaker flipped? Or your system caught part of the lightning strike before the breaker flipped?

I just fixed the URL (it wasn't coding properly before.) Hopefully, someone more knowledgeable will pipe in, but, that PDF file does cover lightning strikes and gear. I guess if your interconnect got cooked, it must happen. I've had stuff shut off and cooked from line surges, but, thankfully, nothing lightning related yet, and no melted interconnects. I guess it could've been worse, and you could've lost the amp (unless you have a melted Nordost Valhalla, where the cabling could cost more than the amp.)

Electricity can do strange things. I've seen it destroy one component in a power strip and leave the other seven untouched. Out of curiosity did you have your equipment plugged into a surge protector/power conditioner? If not it would not only protect the equipment but allow it to perform better as well.

www.furmansound.com Not a plastic radio shack useless MOV only type. And this also shows the importance of properly grounded AC ckts, geee, wasn't I ranting some time ago about UL listing of STUFF, and some genius remarked what kind of damage could be done with Interconnects not UL listed etc etc etc. Yeah electricy can strike at anytime. If you have poor grounds, it found a ground in another component maybe and went through teh IC to that ground. Gee, it's only audio, nothing based on UL or any practical electricla experience means anything. Tweak away with ground eliminators and those other DANGEROUS bogus hum stoppers etc. Just think when a component shorts in a piece, and it decides to energize a chassis, ZAP!!! someone gets electrocuted. Audio, it doesn't need UL or any thing related to reality.

Yiangos

Normally I would agree with you. Lots of these devices do limit current rather severely. There are ones with high current outlets, that do not but these do very little power conditioning. However, you might want to check out some of the power products from a company called Transparent (http://www.transparentcable.com/) audio. Their power products deal with a phenomena called "power factor distortion" (google the term if you want an in depth description), something most power conditioners ignore because it is too expensive and difficult to solve properly.

To be honest with you I'm not sure if Transparent does anything as far as power conditioners for Europe. I do know that they do power cords for Europe. They might

Pf correction reduce wasted energy, correct for inductive load of large transformers in high power amps, as in 4800W worth of amps and 4 large line transformers. http://www.furmansound.com/products/pro/pwr_cond_seq/cond/_pf/pfpror.php