AC polarisation. Does it matter?

Rwwear

It is unfortunitely a well documented fact that plugs get wired backwards sometimes. That is the cause of some electrical house fires when certain critical equipment gets plugged in. Can you say POP !!!

When I bought my current house, the inspector I hired found three light switches wired wrong.

In my old house I had problems with the AC/heat pump. It would blow the breaker once a month. The repair person I hired found that the control box for the heating system was wired wrong by whoever installed it.

The problem could be there for years and never be found. Most things don't need the correct polarity (anything with a 2 prong plug). Even grounded plugs don't necessarily need the correct polarity.

Some audio power cord makers do make reverse polarity power cords. They do have their uses for altering the sound. A friend made his subwoofer more lean and tight with a reverse cord.

>"With the reversed cord going to my hydra and reversed cords from my hydra to the amp and preamp does it not balance out assumnming the house is wired properly? As for the CDP and tuner they would be reversed because their cords are properly wired .Which would be worse, reversed sources or reversed amps?"<
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What a fri*ken mess. How did you ever end up with these power cords?

If you have a multi-meter you can check the polarity at the wall outlet. Set the meter to AC volts insert one test lead probe in the ground hole. Insert the other test lead probe in the smaller of the two staight slot holes. If the polarity is correct the meter will read around 115 to 120V, depending on what your house voltage is.

Follow Gs556 advice and do a continuity check to make sure the cords are as you have described. Are these cords home made? Can you rewire one end of the affected cords?

I should point out that some devices use polarized plugs for safty reasons and if reversed could cause shocks, fires or damaged equipment. One such episode happened to me with the afore mentioned cable box where an electrician had wired the recepticle for an audio video system backwards. When I attempted to connect the cable box, the coax arced when I touched it to the connector and burned out the box. It could have wiped out the whole system which consisted of a very expensive plasma TV. I f a device you have has a polarized plug, I would not reverse it unless authorized by the manufacturer.

You need to be sure all the outlets are wired correctly; do not reverse wiring in the outlets to correct for downsteam issues with your cables/gear.

Once you are sure about the outlets, you can work on the rest to get them all straighted out. My .02 is that you would want "polarity" to be the same on all gear.

As far as checking the wiring, one of the plug-in testers from a hardware store (~$5.00) is all you need.