earth ground

[anotherfreak]

so, I think I understand the protective feature of a properly grounded outlet, but does having an earth ground hold any other benefits??

I amooking to move into a 65yo house and all the plug-ins are two prong. I know some of the kitchen outlets have three pronged "self-breakered" outlets, but they don't groung out to anywhere they just trip if overloaded. Am I going to hear stuff in my hifi equipment that has three pronged plugs??

bill

[zenmindbeginner]

I live in an old house that has the three prong outlets but no actual ground wire run at all. I have heard some slight noise through my Super Reverb, but not my keyboards, stereos, computers or other gadgets. Since I was hearing that bit of line noise through my Super Reverb (a slight ticking) I use these Monster Power AC outlets that I plug into any outlet that has music gear plugged into it.

I also have a bunch of Furman AC-215 units as well as Furman and Monster Power outlets attached to them. I don't hear any kind of line noise when I have all of the conditioners in between my equipment and the wall.

I use these items because they are the cheapest and most effective solution to line conditioning around. You'd be surprised how cheap you can get some of this stuff on eBay (a bulk set of AC-215s that "fell off of a truck" heh, heh) and that's where I got them all. You might not have any problems without conditioning your lines, but it all depends on how clean the power is that is being sent to the house. Duke Power here in N.C. does a pretty good job of providing fairly clean power, but they are not perfect and I sleep pretty sound knowing that all of my equipment has some sort of protection. Good luck on taming your EMI/RFI.

Oh and I almost forgot... powering up and down equipment is done a bit more carefully without a ground.

[geoff_hartwell]

Unplug it when you're done using it.

Then you don't have to worry about lightning either,

just floods.

Geoff

[gorch]

Earth ground is your live insurance. Nothing more.