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RE: Get your pliers

Posted by jea48 (A) on August 27, 2014 at 08:41:41

In Reply to: RE: Get your pliers posted by rick_m on August 26, 2014 at 08:16:12:

The common topology used to be only grounding your preamp and that to try and keep the phono preamp intact when you sparked the tonearm. Interestingly enough that also provided a "safety ground" on the side. Since all of the other devices were hooked to it with shielded cables any internal breakdown from powerline to case would cause fault currents to return to ground through the preamp and trip the breaker or blow the component fuse.


The small gauge signal ground wire in a typical interconnect would never be able to handle the high ground fault inrush current in the event of a ground fault short circuit in a power amp. A typical 20 amp circuit breaker could pass 1000 amps before it could trip open. The small signal ground wire of the IC would melt, blow itself free at one end or the other of the connector. More than likely what would happen first is the component fuse in the amp would blow breaking the ground fault circuit. Of course if the ground fault were ahead of the fuse then the fuse would not be part of the ground fault circuit.

The point is ICs should never be used as an effective means for an AC power ground fault circuit current path.

Something else that should be considered is not all designer/manufacture of audio equipment connect the signal ground to the chassis equipment ground. Example, I have an ARC VT50 power amp. The signal ground is not connected to the chassis equipment ground. So if a ground cheater was used on the power cord plug and if an AC power ground fault were to happen any where in the power cord assembly or inside the amp the outer case of the amp would be HOT with respect to any other equipment grounded piece of equipment. A difference of potential of 120Vac would exist.

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