removing ground plug

Is it really a good idea permanently to disable the ground?

Should be better to find and eliminate the cause of the hum.

You'll get many different opinions, but look at it like this. If your amp had no hum, and you used an upgraded power cord to a crappy .99 cent construction grade wall outlet, would that negate the Pangea ?

Of course not.

Try switching out the wall outlet to a hospital grade one or better. A non current limiting power conditioner would help too. Are you rca interconnects of decent quality ? You can also try running a small wire from a case screw on the amp to another case screw on another piece. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't, cost you nothing to find out though.

That method worked for me when I had a ground loop issue. However since, I have moved my gear to the other side of the room which only only 10ft or so from the breaker box I no longer have a problem. As mentioned be sure all of the equipment is on the same circuit, preferably the same outlet. My problem was my Tv was grounding through my amp, traveling back through the HDMI and then through my receiver and so forth. Running a ground wire from the AVR to the Ground terminal on my Panamax created a shorter, more direct path to ground and the ground loop was thereby terminated. There is no safety issue with removing the ground pin from the power cable though because the amp is grounded through the TV or Avr (whatever unit it is physically connected to that has a ground pin). The only problem is if the Amp would short than it wouldn't send the energy to its own ground and could possibly send the high voltage through the other equipment on it's way to ground, which could potentially cause damage to your other connected components. However, with ground pin left in then any other shorted component would send it's voltage through your amp because it has the best ground. Bottom line it's okay to remove the pin from the amp's power cord or the other grounded component but not both, as long as one connected component is grounded then their isn't a safety issue.

Yes, another piece of equipment that has a three prong, and a physical connection like interconnects, coax, or HDMI. For extra piece of mind you can always run a wire from the chassis of any piece of equipment to the center screw that holds the outlet cover on. That screw is always grounded as well. The idea is to eliminate the ground loop by creating a shorter or more efficient path to ground than the one provided by the amp. Grounding the AVR directly fixed my previous issues, and I never had to remove my ground pin from my amps power cable.

jeremymarcinko wrote: »

Yes, another piece of equipment that has a three prong, and a physical connection like interconnects, coax, or HDMI.
Bottom line it's okay to remove the pin from the amp's power cord or the other grounded component but not both, as long as one connected component is grounded then their isn't a safety issue.

This is totally and absolutely FALSE!
The Safety Ground wire's purpose is to trip a building circuit breaker under fault (short circuit) conditions. Typical US fault currents range from 150 to 1000 Amps until the breaker trips. That's way the Safety Ground wire needs to be as large as the Hot wire. Under no conditions can you safely remove the Safety Ground.

PS Audio PCs have removable ground pins.

Speedskater wrote: »

The Safety Ground wire's purpose is to trip a building circuit breaker under fault (short circuit) conditions. Typical US fault currents range from 150 to 1000 Amps until the breaker trips. That's way the Safety Ground wire needs to be as large as the Hot wire. Under no conditions can you safely remove the Safety Ground.

Are we talking any grounded outlet or just those awful ground fault ones that fail all the time?

I view it like this... every single audio component manufacturer out there will say to NEVER bypass the ground with a cheater plug for this purpose, and given that they probably know quite a bit more than I do, its probably best to listen.

MetropolisLake wrote: »

I view it like this... every single audio component manufacturer out there will say to NEVER bypass the ground with a cheater plug for this purpose, and given that they probably know quite a bit more than I do, its probably best to listen.

....and every manufacturer touts their audio gear as the next best thing to sliced bread, you listen to that too ?

Dennis Gardner wrote: »

What about the huge numbers of CD players, DVD players etc. that bypass a ground? Isn't that what a 2 prong plug is?

If it's a floating case then you can rock a two prong plug all day long, doesn't matter. If it has a three prong plug and you purposely bypass it, that's a different story.

What exactly do you guys think the ground wire is for anyway? It would be a heck of a lot easier and cheaper to just supply two prong plugs on everything if they do nothing but induce ground loops.

tonyb wrote: »

If it was so dangerous, cheater plugs and power cords with removable ground pins would be illegal not to mention the liability issue manufacturers would face.

Peavy did a great writeup on this, I tried to post the link but it has to be approved I guess. They gravely warn against doing it, I'm assuming because they are concerned about liability. Other manufacturers as well as professors and industry groups warn against it as well. I'm just not sure why everybody takes it so lightly. They don't write this stuff to sell more products or confuse everybody. "Don't do this, you very well could die" isn't exactly the greatest sales pitch in the world.

Yeah I dunno, maybe the risk is overstated. I grew up in fear of electricity, my dad was an electrician, he's been shocked by 480 volts before, which is no joke. For some stupid reason I turned around and went to electrical engineering school after all that. Mistake. A/C freaks me out. I don't like taking risks with it.

Hello,
The reason to have a safety ground on a power amplifier is that if the chassis doesn't have it's own path to earth ground and the AC hot becomes shorted to the chassis anyone touching it could be shocked. This would be important for professional gear that is often moved around and can receive rough handling, perhaps increasing the likelihood of internal wires becoming loose. No manufacturer is going to tell you to remove a safety feature placing themselves liable if a problem occurs. Kind of like Toyota telling you not to use your seat belts.
If your system has humming caused by a ground loop it is best to solve the grounding problem and leave any safety ground intact. Humming is caused by either too many grounds at different voltage potentials or not enough proper grounding. Using a cheater plug should only a temporary solution.
Ken

tonyb wrote: »

Under certain conditions, like Ken suggests, it is possible for the chassis to become energized, but you have interconnecting cables to carry that to another grounded piece.

The ground wire in XLR cables seems to be able to do this. When all your equipment has an earth ground, you can do a ground lift which ditches this wire, and any ground loop goes away. Or, if you have a bunch of equipment in a rack, you can ground one piece of equipment but not the others, and if they're connected with XLR cables, I think everything is still grounded and probably still no ground loop.

What I don't understand is how RCA cables work in this situation. I'm not sure they still ground everything but some people say they are. I guess if you're getting ground loops with them plugged in maybe they are. Seems to me that they would be the equivalent of both blanking out the hardwired ground as well as doing a ground lift via XLR cables, which is not grounded. I don't see how you can be truly grounded in that situation with RCA cables but I'm not sure of the difference in internal wiring of components that use XLR cables vs. RCA.