Ungrounding an Amp--Any Danger?

Nsgarch: High quality coaxial analog interconnects, if not prevalent, are indeed made, by van den Hul for instance (which I happen to own)...there are others...

Would somebody please explain to me what the Signal Ground Lift switch on the back of my amp is for? IN LAYMAN'S TERMS. I don't really understand electricity, you see. I believe the switch is currently lifted, but I've no clear idea what that did for me (again, in layman's terms). "Well, it needs to be either lifted or not," I thought to myself, and "lifted" seemed somehow the sonically appropriate term. Maybe I should have read the owners' manual..

My amp has a hum that you can only hear when your ear is right up to it; i.e. a pretty quiet amp? Is this the sort of (very subtle) hum people are complaining about? All my stuff is plugged into a power conditioner, which of course has three-prong receptacles, and the power conditioner is plugged into a (grounded) wall outlet. All of these important tasks -- so vital to turning the stereo ON, so you can, you know, LISTEN TO IT -- were accomplished on Day 1. I'd have thought that was the last thought I'd need to give to the matter of electricity, but maybe I'm just hopelessly naive.

Zaikesman, re the van den Hul "screened" (shielded) coaxial products: There are only two unbalanced cables which are spec'd. for audio signal transfer, and both of them use vdH's proprietary non-metallic "Linear Structured Carbon" as the shield. Since it's carbon (non metallic) it's not affected by EMI (hum) and does a pretty good job soaking up RFI.

But as I said in my earlier post (I should have listed it I suppose) this product is definitely a hybrid. Most of vdH's audio cables do use balanced (shotgun) conductors in fact. You can see them all at:

http://www.vandenhul.com/cable/c-cab-ty.htm#12

Nsgarch: I own vdH The First Ultimate and The First Metal Screen coaxial IC's. Metal-free TFU uses a carbon fiber screen/return, which far from being especially immune to EMI/RFI, is actually not recommended for use in situations where hum is likely to be picked up, including connections to tube amps -- a drawback in an otherwise outstandingly high fidelity design that I can personally attest to. TFMS was introduced to help in just those applications, by virtue of (as the name implies) an additional metal-mesh screen layer. vdH also makes several other models employing coaxial construction for analog use, both all-metal and metal/carbon hybrids (The Bay, The Name, D-300, The Source, The Well, D-310, The Combination, and MC Silver are all coaxial designs intended for audioband signals). WireWorld is another company that makes coaxial analog IC's, using a variation where the inner and outer conductors are both tubular. (It might be worth adding that, although coaxial cables by definition have their screens connected at both ends, WireWorld still claims these models are audibly directional due to grain orientation.)