Grounding: You NEED To Watch This Video

[Hides-His-Eyes]

Is there some kind of precendent for disconnecting grounds on the USA? I just don't know why anyone would even need telling once!

[Renegadrian]

That particular video doesn't show up for me. It shows the title and all but no video. Anyone else having this problem? I'm on a Mac which could be the issue.

Did you go to the bottom of the page?! 

[Paul Marossy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YM1iwC6vhg&feature=related

He talks about ground loops here. First he gets rid of the loop noise by disconnecting one of the amps, and hurray the noise is gone. The he lifts the ground of one of the amps, and for some reason the noise is back, which he describes like the noise is the way ... er we expected. Right after that he advises that we should use well grounded amps. A bit confusing video.

Yeah, I saw that one and initially thought the same thing, too. But the grounds of the amps are still connected together via that A/B box, so I think it's OK to do that. He just broke the ground loop by removing the second ground connection happening at the power cord. Personally, I prefer to break the ground connection at the inputs, but both methods usually work.

[petemoore]

Is there some kind of precendent for disconnecting grounds on the USA?
 This is not aimed at...anyone here, here how it's been egosplained to me:
 "Yah...duhh...whaddya think that grey adapter is for then ? They're made for plugging stuff in, just like this//what they're designed for !
 They wouldn't sell 'em if they weren't safe!
 It's an adapter...I use 'em all the time and never had a problem."
 Imagine these words in a contextual scenario that dictates electric jam, or no jam..."cause all I brought was an electric guitar"...while necessitatively criticizing and being framed as attacking ''dudes knowldedge of electricity'', the vote often goes to the guy who says I KNOW WHAT I"M DOING the most forcefully, [or using the Edwin R. Murrow tone first]...when this happens I know for certain I don't want to be there, for this, and other reasons.
 'What is the power supply like?" is an elementary band related question, how well it is answered [over the phone] has everything to do with my level of interest.
  See 'Desert Show' for directly related: typical and special power supply ''conversations''.
 

[Hides-His-Eyes]

I have never seen such a device for sale here! And our earth pins are like, 4mm thick, no way you could take one off without a hacksaw, and even if you could, the plug sockets won't allow the live pins to enter without the ground being in there first (so that double insulated things like phone chargers have a dummy plastic pin to fool it!)

I guess that's what happens when the government know they're going to be footing the bill for people electrocuting themselves! They must take you guys for smarter than us

[Paul Marossy]

I have never seen such a device for sale here! And our earth pins are like, 4mm thick, no way you could take one off without a hacksaw, and even if you could, the plug sockets won't allow the live pins to enter without the ground being in there first (so that double insulated things like phone chargers have a dummy plastic pin to fool it!)

It's pretty easy to do it here. You could probably do it with a pair of pliers by bending it back and forth a few times. I don't know where people even get the idea that removing the ground on a three prong power cord helps with noise. I think it's in the category of "old wive's tales". How they do things in your part of the world makes sense. Stops people from doing the stupid things people do here.

I bought a used Crate bass amp once that had that had the ground cut off on the power cord in a vain attempt to make the amp quieter and I put a new grounded cord on it but the amp was still just as noisy. I think it was just a poorly designed amp.

[jolly1423]

I have a couple of powered mackie studio monitors and I get a horrible bassy hum when they are grounded. I didn't hack the pins off but when I use one of those ground lifting adapters the are super quiet. What's the deal there? Is that dangerous since I not touching them or using a mic?

[petemoore]

  pliers or end cutters'll take the prong off, pliers rip it out better.
  Some equipent had a ground...a wire at the plug end you were supposed to screw to a ground.
  Other ground defeat adapters had similar lug-tab, I guess to screw the socket-plate screw through.
  Some ground defeat plugs don't have this.
  Some ground defeat plugs were an adapter that had the ground pin pulled out.
  There are 100's of variations, and ''correctly grounded'' either is...or any one of these apply.
  Not sure what's up with the monitors and safe is whatever too, probably ther'es something else up with the ground or signal there, do they hum when no signal wire is connected ?

[jolly1423]

I'm not sure and I'm in the middle of re-modeling my room so nothing is hooked up right now. I'll have to test that out though. My cousin had the same problem with his too, he was the one who told be to ditch the ground.

[petemoore]

  I'm thinking about what/how to do it.
  Put all the grounds in, and test them ?
  Worth a try, it seems is has to work.
  It's a debug, similar to other debugs, a good start by testing the metal ground clamp at the metal water pipe...then...everything else in that chain.

[Paul Marossy]

I bought one of those Greenlee low voltage detectors shown in the video off of ebay the other day. I think it will be a very handy tool for isolating grounding problems and sources of audio noise caused by AC coupling.