Electrician Coming Over What to Do?

Hi again, Sean brings up a good point when he said there is a lot of noise being transmitted in the big city areas via the power lines and that some of it is coming through to your system. I happen to live in a small town in the Santa Cruz Mountains where everything is fresh and clean including the power.

I honestly don't believe I can get the noise floor any lower except maybe by stuffing a sock in my kids mouths ;^).

I would however like to purchase one of those sniffers. It might help when trouble shooting friends systems.

Drubin, fear not the isolated ground, it's the best way to go in my opinion. Even if you can only isolate back to your service (meter) it will work wonders. Just make sure your receptacles are I.G. rated.

Sean makes another good point on conduit size. Hindsight tells me I should have run 1" to my two systems. I ran 3/4 and now the conduit is getting pretty full. I'd like to add four more circuits since I've added more stuff into my system. I guess I'll make due with what I have for now.

Everyone seems to have an opinion on wire type and size. If anyone ever asked me to run #10 solid to there gear which was less than 200' from the source I'd tell them to stuff it. Unless they were paying cash of course :^)

Did I mention how long I've been doing this? 20+ years!!!

I put wire in pvc or emt so that I can pull future wire if I want to revise later on. I use big J boxes or LB at the bends instead of a bender. I forgo using romex and prefer wire in pipe. It might be a good idea to use a larger than “code minimum” size pipe so that you can pull more circuits later on or replace what is in the pipe easily. I use at least a 1”. If you need to modify later on or add more circuits, this would save some money.

I have a journeyman electrician with a good attitude about my hobby. I recommend you find someone with a good attitude too. That can make all the difference in the world. Not all electricians will hate you because you have the inclination to spend on this hobby. They will not like you if you are an ass.

Most electricians do service work by the hour, instead of by bid, so they really should not mind a little extra wire or grounding in their circuit if they know in advance what the job is about. If you know your electrician, you might be able to get away with just asking him to exceed code and use better products ( wirenuts, panels) etc., otherwise an electrical permit for your locale is in order.

I like the after market line conditioners I have used. I may not need them, but I prefer how any I have used have shaped the sound a little more to my liking. Usually dropping the noise floor and increasing detail is what they do for me. This after-market stuff would not work well if the wiring is not in place. Good luck!

I put two pairs of rg6 and two pairs of cat 5 near every location I have a stereo. They end near the cable or phone enters your building. I put them in a separate pipe.

Glen / Drubin: I ran into a situation where a gentleman had two separate grounds that were no more than about 10 feet apart from each other. The way that things were set up electrically, he had items from both grounds tied into the same system. He had mentioned to me that he was getting "whacked" when touching specific items within the system. I stopped by and took a look at what was going on. I was able to measure 40 volts on the chassis of some of his components due to the ground situation.

Once we tied the two ground rods together, the voltage dropped down to zero as we had minimized the differences in potential between the two grounds. The reason why he was only getting "whacked" on specific components had to do with how they were wired internally or the fact that he had a couple of pieces that were not oriented in the outlet for the proper AC polarity. Once we had gotten all of this straightened out, his components were no longer "hot" and the noise floor had dropped quite a bit.

I have run into other situations that were of similar nature, so i know this to be a somewhat "normal" situation. That is why i suggested keeping the ground rods as close together as is possible. So long as they are within a foot or so, i don't see a problem developing. If it does, one can simply strap the two together and be done with it. Sean
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There seems to be some confusion on isolated ground circuits. I am not implying you should add a second ground rod to obtain an I.G. circuit. Just tie your isolated ground to the ground bar at the meter if possible or to the ground rod itself. Rarly do I add a second ground rod and 99 times out of 100 I bond the two rods together when I do.

Glen: a TRUE "isolated" ground is just that, "isolated" from all other grounds. Having a ground path that runs directly back to the earth ground from the audio circuitry without tying into any other circuits would be called a "dedicated" ground. Obviously, this wording could still get us into trouble and keep us confused. While all of this boils down to a matter of wording and semantics, i think that we are standing on the same basic "ground" and have "common" thoughts about the subject : ) Sean
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