Eliminating hum

No disrespect Bojack but that statement is completely untrue, irresponsible and ignores why the ground was there in the first place.

Again, find and fix the problem. Using a cheater plug may mask a ground loop problem, but causes greater concerns by lifting an important safety element in the home's protection and placing your home, equipment, family, etc. at risk.

01-02-15: Bojack
Using cheater plugs is completely safe and often effective.

Don't let the underwriter of your homeowner's policy see that post :-)

Assuming the equipment is in good physical condition, so that there is little risk of an internal short developing between a "hot" AC wire and chassis, the risk that is entailed by the use of a cheater plug is extremely small. However, it cannot be said that the risk is zero. And if that very small risk were to ever materialize, perhaps because the component was marginally designed with respect to how the internal AC wiring is routed relative to nearby sources of heat within the component, or perhaps because the component was wired on a Friday afternoon by someone who was in a hurry to leave, or for whatever reason, the result could very conceivably be either a fire or electrocution.

Yes, use of a cheater plug is "often effective." However the third prong is provided on AC plugs and outlets for a reason. A claim that use of a cheater plug is "completely safe" is, frankly, misleading, potentially harmful, and nonsense.

Good comments by the others. Regards,
-- Al

Not to harp on this, but electricity will try to find the shortest/easiest path to ground. By removing that short, certain path by lifting the ground, and a fault occurs, "You", your family touching something else, your pet, or other equipment may become the shortest/easiest path to ground instead.

Be safe, be smart, don't take things for granted.

Based on my own personal experience, hum can also be picked up as airborne EMF from a nearby amplifier. In my case, what I had spent hours configuring and re-configuring, as suggested by Tjassoc, was not an AC ground loop at all, but EMF picked up by my IC connecting the phono stage and pre-amp. Simple aluminum foil around the IC remediated the problem. This issue can be very tricky, as my own experience attests to. Good luck.

Goodness I have used cheaters my whole 37 years of audio life. Most of us have and it will at least help you understand if it is a ground loop issue.

I must be lucky:). I have never, ever heard of any incident in real life to be honest Agoners.

Al, most amps are grounded at the first reservoir cap in the power supply etc...

This topic comes up all the time on many threads and it always makes me think " who has ever, ever been harmed by using a cheater on an amp or preamp?"