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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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In Reply to: **IMPORTANT** The "ground" is there to protect your life. posted by Al Sekela on April 7, 2007 at 09:09:44:
Most gear does not "float" the chassis ( because of poor design and cost cutting measures ), but instead, ties the chassis and board to neutral / ground. This is commonly referred to as "star grounding". While many manufacturers actually advertise such a design as being beneficial, it only works effectively in high impedance i.e. tubed circuitry. It is completely useless and actually detrimental for use with most Solid State designs.If the "hot" wire were to come into contact with the chassis of a "star grounded" piece of gear using a "cheater" ( ground lift ) plug, the path to ground would still remain conductive. That is, the current would flow through the interconnects tied to other gear in the system, which hopefully is grounded. This would in turn pop the fuse of the component, IF the component was properly fused.
The exception to this would be if the safety ground of all of the components had been lifted simultaneously and / or one was using interconnects with a very small gauge ground conductor. With nothing in the system grounded, the path to Earth ground is broken, negating the fusible link. With very small ground conductors on interconnects, the conductor itself would break connection, acting much like a fuse itself. Once that connection was broken, the path to ground would also be broken, leaving the voltage on the chassis of the component to seek ground elsewhere.
Other than that, i agree with everything that Al has to say. Start by fixing your AC / grounding system and most all of your problems will be taken care of. If something should come up after the AC / grounding system has been dealt with, it shouldn't be too hard to find the problem or offending piece of junk gear. The most common problem after "fixing" the AC system would be gear that uses old school non-polarized two pronged plugs. In that case, here's a link that may help some of you solve such a problem. Sean
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- A very common exception - Sean 10:21:53 04/08/07 (0)
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