i electrocuted myself last night

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starbuck26

starbuck26

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Hey fellas,

I was over at my practice space last night, and I started hearing a lot of radio signal coming through my amplifier. I went over to inspect it and went to flip the standby switch on. When I touched it I received quite a shock—the kind that makes you shake a bit and makes your tongue salivate immediately. I imagine I could have killed myself.

I went out to the hallway for a minute or two to make sure I wasn't going to die. I figured if I had a heart attack out there someone would see me collapse and call the ambulance. Turns out I was fine.

I went back in and used a drum stick to flip the amplifier off. Then I used the same drumstick to flip the tubes back on to drain the caps (which, I think is the way you're supposed to do it, no?)

I switched it to a different outlet and everything seems to be working fine. Now I'm terrified to hit the switch though. Anyone have any idea what could have happened? I assume it's the outlet, and I should yell at the company we rent from. I really have no understanding of where the problem can be.

What should I do?
 
i didn't know

they had www connectivity

in the afterlife :D




(electrocuted means dead)
 
starbuck26 said:
I went back in and used a drum stick to flip the amplifier off. Then I used the same drumstick to flip the tubes back on to drain the caps (which, I think is the way you're supposed to do it, no?)

I switched it to a different outlet and everything seems to be working fine. Now I'm terrified to hit the switch though. Anyone have any idea what could have happened? I assume it's the outlet, and I should yell at the company we rent from. I really have no understanding of where the problem can be.

What should I do?
Click to expand...

First, flipping the standby switch with the amp off (or whatever it is you did) won't drain the caps, but the caps being charged up won't shock you anywhere on the outside of the amp, either, so don't worry about that.

A really good investment for any musician who uses electricity out of a wall socket is an outlet checker. Radio Shack has them, and they are cheap. An outlet checker is a gizmo with LEDs on it that plugs into a wall socket, and the lit LED pattern tells you how the outlet is wired and alerts you to open ground, hot-neutral reversed, etc. wiring faults that can be very dangerous.

Get one of these, check the outlet, and alert the landlord; he'll want to know if there is a problem, seeing how it's a potential lawsuit.

BTW, you haven't clipped the ground pin on your amp's power cord or plugged in through a ground lift block, have you?
 
So heaven has cable modems?

If it's dial up, then you definitely went to hell.
 
-the thing should have blown a fuse. ..electricity in a switch, the switch might be faulty and getting charged. Or, voltage has leaked to ground, which, blows a fuse.

-I dont think you can drain capacitors from a switch. ..but possibly..

- My suspect would be a faulty switch, since no fuses were blown. Which means I think, no voltage has leaked to ground, only to the standby switch...
This means, the outlet probably wasn't the culprit. ..I would find the fuse of the outlet, remove it, put something else in the outlet, put the fuse back and see what happends. If the thing in the outlet explodes, your amp might be fine, but if everything works fine, your amp might be lethal.-->see a tech.

-I realise now why russians used plastic switches on my amp. :rolleyes:
 
ggunn said:
A really good investment for any musician who uses electricity out of a wall socket is an outlet checker.
Click to expand...

+1 Never plug your gear into a strange outlet without checking it first.
 
good idea with the outlet checker, but you might want to take the amp to a shop to get checked also.

What else were you touching? Were you barefoot on a concrete floor? Touching another part of the amp? Touching the strings on your guitar when it was plugged into the amp? Electricity needs a path through your body to shock you.
 
Time for a professional electrician. If you were shocked that badly, don't mess around.
 
Does your amp have a polarity switch or a power switch with two on positions and one off in the middle? If so, you needed to reverse to polarity (or switch it on with the other on position). Also, if that's so, in the long term, you should have someone install a properly grounded power cord that will render the polarity switch's function useless. I've had two old Ampegs that had polarity switches that in the wrong poistion would cause me to get shocked if contacted ground while holding my strings or in any way the chassis of the amp.

A properly (re)wired amp by modern standards will not shock you if an outlet is wired in reverse polarity. The only bad thing would be if the ground pin were hot instead of ground (I've never encountered that).

ggun's correct about draining the caps. You have to short them to ground or bleed them with a resistor (with no power connected!) to do that.
 
Lot to answer and think about.

I did have my guitar strung around my neck. I was standing on a carpet with my shoes on. It's likely that my left hand was on my strings, but I can't remember. Thinking through it, though, it must have been because I would have muted the strings to kill the feedback as I got closer to the amp.

I'll get an outlet tester today and check it out.

I've never removed the ground pin from any power cable, ever.

The amp is a Fender Hot Rod DeVille. The on/off switch is two way, on and off. Same with the standby. I was thinking about it... I may have touched the standby switch or the power switch when I received the shock... I can't remember.

I'm going to bring my amp to a genius this week. What will he test to find if there's a problem? And how will I know he fixed it?

And what of the radio interference? In my mind, that's the only symptom I could gather.

I assume the problem is indeed the outlet, as last week I had another problem that I didn't think too much of. The outlet looks like this:

O O
O O

I had my pedalboard (a Furman board with a power conditioner) and my amplifier connected to that outlet. I was getting some nasty nosie coming out of my amp. I unplugged the pedalboard and plugged it into another outlet, and when I did so the noise disappeared. Last night, I unplugged my amp from the right side of the socket and plugged it into the left side of the socket, and didn't have any issues at all (and didn't get shocked when turning it off. Now that I think of it, though, I may just not have had my guitar in my hand when I flicked the switch off.

Either way, the outlet and amp will be looked at, and the landlord will be notified. That shit was scary. :(
 
arcaxis said:
Just another thought.....
Any chance it could have simply been a blast of static electricity discharging from you? In a dry room if you shuffle across a floor with carpet with rubber sole shoes there's a pretty good chance you'll charge yourself up with several thousand volts and touching the amp gave it a path to discharge. Did you hear a "snap" when it occurred (maybe not if you had some feedback going on at the time).
Click to expand...

I doubt that was it. It actually made my arm shake when I touched it. I've never had a shock that did that to me.

Except that encounter with the hermaphrodite at the Black Swan bar in Tivoli, New York. That one was pretty nasty. :D
 
I just called my local amp genius, btw. He said that from what I described it could very well have been a faulty ground in the outlet. I'm going to test the outlet tonight. If the meter doesn't show something going on I'll take it to him and have him look at it.
 
Jouni said:
-the thing should have blown a fuse. ..electricity in a switch, the switch might be faulty and getting charged. Or, voltage has leaked to ground, which, blows a fuse.

-I dont think you can drain capacitors from a switch. ..but possibly..

- My suspect would be a faulty switch, since no fuses were blown. Which means I think, no voltage has leaked to ground, only to the standby switch...
This means, the outlet probably wasn't the culprit. ..I would find the fuse of the outlet, remove it, put something else in the outlet, put the fuse back and see what happends. If the thing in the outlet explodes, your amp might be fine, but if everything works fine, your amp might be lethal.-->see a tech.

-I realise now why russians used plastic switches on my amp. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Problems like this are usually due to outlet problems, like an open ground pin (very bad), or hot/neutral reversed (much worse). Metal switches typically have the switch arm connected to chassis ground, which is connected to the ground pin in the outlet if the amp has a proper power cord, so a problem with the outlet will directly affect you if you touch the switch. I doubt a fuse has anything to do with the problem, and the switch is probably fine.

If someone who isn't familiar with electrical power wiring color conventions wires up an outlet, it would be very easy for them to make a potentially fatal mistake. Although it might seem reasonable that white would be hot and black would be ground, it's not. Hot is black and neutral is white.

Check your outlets, guys! The person who wired up that stage might just be the club owner's brother-in-law who happened to have a screwdriver handy.
 
I'm an electrician, I've been shocked plenty of times, and I'm still here. Never electicuted, which does indeed mean death. But I'd definatly get the amp checked out, and talk to who ever you're renting from and let them know you got shocked. More than likely the other outlet you plugded it into was on the same circuit.
 
starbuck26 said:
I doubt that was it. It actually made my arm shake when I touched it. I've never had a shock that did that to me.
Click to expand...
Mmm, gota' love that feeling. and those neat few next moments waiting to see if your frikin hart's still going or whatever. Oh yeah.
I haven't done that in years but still remember vividly that buzz' in the arm thing.
And my wife wants to play with her shoes off..

Problems like this are usually due to outlet problems, like an open ground pin (very bad), or hot/neutral reversed (much worse). Metal switches typically have the switch arm connected to chassis ground, which is connected to the ground pin in the outlet if the amp has a proper power cord, so a problem with the outlet will directly affect you if you touch the switch. I doubt a fuse has anything to do with the problem, and the switch is probably fine.
Click to expand...
Question- If in shoes, on carpet, switch, chassis and guitar all on the same case and shield- where does the shock path come from?
 
mixsit said:
Mmm, gota' love that feeling. and those neat few next moments waiting to see if your frikin hart's still going or whatever. Oh yeah.
I haven't done that in years but still remember vividly that buzz' in the arm thing.
And my wife wants to play with her shoes off..

Question- If in shoes, on carpet, switch, chassis and guitar all on the same case and shield- where does the shock path come from?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure how those Furman boards are wired, but the shield of the output may be isolated from the shield of the input to avoid ground loops. If that is so, and he was touching his guitar (which is on the Furman shield) at the same time as he touched the switch, then he connected the two shields through his body. As long as both shields are adequately grounded, there shouldn't be a problem, but if the amp or the Furman is plugged into a faulty or incorrectly wired outlet... zap.
 
Off point but important to anyone who uses lots electrical gear - a lot of people who die from electrocution die within 30 mins to 3 hours after the event from heart attack - even though they think they are ok and are often up and walking around.
If you do get a bad shock from a rig or whatever you should sit down, try to relax, get your breathing back to normal and regularly and check your heart beat, if it is irregular then you need medical help ASAP. Handy to know just incase!
 
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