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In Reply to: Re: All cellulose, no cheese posted by MicKilla on September 02, 2003 at 16:57:47:
Having a 3 pin outlet is no guarantee that the third pin is actually connected to anything. Go to Rat Shack for a tester that will plug into an outlet and identify via LEDs any circuit faults. Then threaten to sue any club with deficient power supply.
The direct box could also be at fault. The better ones have a ground lift switch so that you can ground or de-ground the chassis. To be sure it's not AFU use a voltmeter to read AC voltage from the guitar strings to the mic body. There shouldn't be any.
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Good idea about the clubs outlets. I'm going to bring that up about having something in my bands contracts about it. Thanks.
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An additional factor, are the mixer power and the stage power ,that the guitar amp is plugged into, on the same breaker panel.
power feeds from different panels may have different ground potentials. All grounds are not created equal.
While that can have an impact, the more important question to ask is, "Are they on the same phase?"When multiple pieces of interconnected gear are plugged into outlet circuits with different phases, interchassis currents will occur. Often, people assume that the resulting hum is from a "ground loop", and they start lifting grounds until they finally find the one that stops the hum. By this point, the whole system is usually floating, which makes for a shock hazard.
When you do have multiple pieces of gear plugged into different outlet circuits, make sure that they are all on the same phase. If you have 240v single phase service, this would be every other breaker. If you have 3-phase service, this would be every third breaker. If you have fuses, or some older distribution system, then who knows.
One thing that you can do is to run an extension cord from one place where gear is plugged in to wherever else you'll have gear plugged in. Use a voltmeter and test between the hot leads of the extension cord and the wall outlet. If your outlets are wired correctly, this would be the smaller of the two slots. If you measure 0 volts, then the outlets are the same phase. If you measure 208 or 240 volts, then the outlets are on differing phases. Either find another outlet with matching phase, or if you know what you are doing, swap some wires in the distribution panel.
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