Will this cause (grounding) problems?

[Sophia2001]

Hi all,

Can someone help me with the following question: I want to mount a number of pedals directly to an aluminum plate (without velcro). My idea was to drill holes in the aluminum plate and screw them from under into the enclosure (eg a Hammond 1590 enclosure). I would like to use aluminum for it's strength, but aluminum is conductive. So, all pedals are connected to each other. My question is, will this cause problems? Should I worry about grounding or noise problems? I use a power supply with isolated outputs.

Thanks in advance for your help!



Kind regards,
Sophia 

[r080]

Welcome to the forum!

Some other experts will probably chime in shortly, but I don't see a big problem. As RG Keen has posted on here many times, you have to pay attention to how much current can flow through a "ground". For amplifiers, you are likely to have larger currents flowing on the ground lines. For pedals, especially things like analog drives, the current is very low. The chance of ground loops is therefore low.

[Sophia2001]

Thank you for your quick reply!

Current:
pedal 1 = 9v / 100mA
pedal 2 = 9v / 100mA
pedal 3 = 9v / 100mA
pedal 4 = 9v / 100mA
pedal 5 = 9v / 400mA (empress ParaEQ deluxe)
pedal 6 = passive DI

Sophia 

[r080]

Yup, very unlikely for that to be a problem. If you think about it, people who use daisy chain power supplies would have ground loop problems all the time if normal production pedals were causing large current on ground.

That seems like a great idea. Are you essentially making an aluminum plate pedalboard?

[antonis]

I use a power supply with isolated outputs.

What about inputs..??

P.S. Welcome, also..

[ElectricDruid]

As others have said, the grounds of the pedals are *already* connected by the patch cables (blue lines in your diagram) so adding further conductive paths isn't going to change the situation massively. It *could* do if one path (for current) was heavily favoured over another, leading to a voltage difference between things that were supposed to all be "ground". In practice, I would be very surprised if you see a problem. Having everything tied to one big grounded plate seems more likely to *kill* noise than create it, if I'm honest - especially since aluminium is a good conductor.