Ground Problem?

[SS454]

I have this problem. I just moved into a new apartment and just finished setting up my studio. When I turn off my guitar amp(not miked),or bass amp, I get a loud pop through my monitors. I'm also experiencing some RF problems. Could this be a bad ground? I think all the outlets in the room are on the same breaker. Does anyone know how to solve this?

[pipelineaudio]

go over to my grandma's house and look outside my room...there should be one of Mat's old extension poles hammered about 9 feet down thru the sand I used to use that as my ground rod....but if not take a look around here : http://www.tangible-technology.com/

[SS454]

Aaron, I went over to your grandmas house. But you stupid uncle didn't recognize me and tried to kick my ass, But I was too fast for him. So then he got in his camino, put on George Thourogood's "Bad to the Bone", and chased me around triangle park!


Nah! Thanks for the link man. Latahs. Nick

[SS454]

Yeah Aaron! That site rocks! Now I 'll have another site to dwell over. Tanks Eh?

[pipelineaudio]

LOL!!!! as long as he's not trying to throw coconuts at you

[Sennheiser]

You need to turn down your monitor amp before you start turning things off. Or on for that matter.

With my setup, the amp is the first piece of equipment turned off and the last to be turned on.

[Phyl]

I agree with Sennheiser.

I have everything plugged into a Furman power conditioner and if I don't turn down my monitor volume before powering the computer down, I get a pop through the monitors.

I don't know of any soultion other than placing a big filtering device like a UPS on every piece of equipment, and even that might not work.

[SS454]

Originally posted by Sennheiser
You need to turn down your monitor amp before you start turning things off. Or on for that matter.

With my setup, the amp is the first piece of equipment turned off and the last to be turned on.

Yeah I usually do that too, but usually thats because everything is connected at the mixer then to the ampfor the monitors. This happens when I turn of my guitar amp on the other side of the room. It shouldn't do that. It's sort of a different kind of problem.


Phyl, how much was your power conditioner? I've been thinking about getting one.

[pipelineaudio]

remember jensentransformers, with the schemaics for the mic pre's ?

well go take a look at their isolaton boxes

[Phyl]

What I have is Furman rack mount and I think it was around $50 at Mars Music. It's essentially a power strip with some filtering, but like I said, I still have problems with the same sort of thing you do.

I don't think grounding is the problem. When you turn off any piece of equipment the power supply discharges and can send some pretty nasty transients down the power line. Other electrical devices in your house will "see" the transient but their power supplies usually have some filtering in place to handle it. Don't know why you would see the problem at your new place but not at the old place, proximity of the amp and monitors might be an issue.

The best defense is probably to turn the monitors down. You could also look for an inline power filter at Radio Shack and place it between your amp and the wall socket.

[spindlehead]

Dude, I think it probably IS a grounding issue. You live in an apartment now, right? Apartment building wiring can leave the ground floating all over the place. Your old place probably had a good earth-ground.

This might be a pretty dumb way to fix it, but if it works it'll be cheap. All you'll need is a long heavy-ish gage wire:

Kill the breaker for your studio room's outlets.

Take the cover off one of your outlets and pull the recepticles out until you can get at the wires.

Find the ground wire and add your long wire onto its terminal screw on the recepticle or wire-nut or whatevahs.

Run your wire to the kitchen or bathroom, strip about a foot of insulation from the other end and wind it tightly around your cold water pipe where it goes into the building. Cover da buggah wit electrical tape.

Put your outlet cover back on (who cares if you get one wire hanging out?) Switch on the breaker and see if you're popless.

The cold water pipe should give you a pretty damn good earth ground and all the outlets on that circuit will be referenced to it now. Don't let your super see it!

Tryem bah! Cheap!

Its the city dwellers version of roller pole pounded in Aaron's grandma's back yard. and no uncle john.

[SS454]

Ho shooooots Peneline! how you know dat? What you tink you stay smart eh? You one ground expert? Nah! I try em. Tanks eh?

[pipelineaudio]

whats black and crispy and hangs from a light fixture?

besides a portagee electrician

we're about to find out

[spindlehead]

I just had a horrifying image of your neighbor's industrial strength vibrator shorting to ground and sending a trail of burning insulation through your apartment. Maybe its not such a good idea...

[soundboy]

lol

[Light]

Get a Furman power conditioner. It should solve your problem, which is not a ground issue by the way. When you turn things off, it is sending a surge through the rest of your gear, which a power conditioner will prevent.

Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi

[pipelineaudio]

"which is not a ground issue by the way"

not so fast. When the amp turns off, if theyre all going to the same ground, what all of the devices see as zero volts certainly changes. Thats enough to click easy. You might be right about the surge, but I wouldnt rule grounding out.

Never hurts to have a decent grounding scheme. Never hurts to have a power conditioner either

[Phyl]

Pipeline is right, these sort of problems are rarely just the result of one defect like bad grounds or lack of filtering etc.

When a unit is powered down, the power supply discharges and you are always going to see artifacts (transients) appearing on the black (common), white (hot) and ground (green) lines of typical 120V house wiring. In addition, you often also get switch noise, which is high frequency spike generated by the contacts on the power switch whenever they are opened or closed.

You can place the blame on the unit being turned off for generating the noise, or blame the affected unit for not having enough filtering to be immune from the noise, but it's pretty immaterial once you're forced to replace a tweeter because you didn't turn the monitors down before powering everything off.

Do the obvious things first. Check your groung wiring visually on the house plugs, verify the grounding scheme with an ohmeter, but please don't run bare (or sheiled) wire between an outlet and the kitchen sink and don't lift the ground connections using a cheater.

If none of these things work, look into power filters, conditioners, and put everything on the same outlet if possible.

[SS454]

Thanks Phyl and pipeline, So if I don't run the ground to a pipe, then getting a power conditioner should do the trick? I don't think I can all my gear on the same outlet, theres just too much gear.

[Phyl]

I don't think that buying a power conditioner will guarantee the pops will go away, it's just an idea to try. If nothing else it will offfer some protection against other problems like noisy power, very common in an apartment complex where everyone and their brother is running a television, vacuum cleaner, etc.

You may do everything within your power and still have those annoying pops. Like I said, I have the same problem you do even with a power conditioner, that's why I got into the habit of turning down my monitor volume before powering down other appliances.

There's really not much you can do in an apartment to get a better ground. I suspect if you were to use an ohmmeter to check continuity between the water pipes and the grounding plug on your wall outlets you would get a short, which tells you that your outlets are indeed grounded. I guess the only thing left to do then is toss a wire out the window and connect it to copper stake in the ground

Let us know what finally works for you.

Phil

[SS454]

Thank you Phil, you've been a lot of help.