ground this!

all right, all right. yes i'm new, but i have an important question about grounding a set of turntables. the dj mixer has two grounds on it, one for each table. however, my shanty house IS NOT GROUNDED. well, about 95% of it at least. so! does this mixer still ground on its own? or does it need to be plugged into an outlet that is grounded as well? [also, what are the hazards of not grounding/grounding improperly? i know it can fry your table/s but i'm still curious]-----thanks

oh yea, read the rules

i used to get electric shocks from my mixer when i didnt ground it, i used to get weird crackles from the decks too, cant tell u much more than that i dont really know about it, but if u can do it, do it.

Well you should be able to hear the difference between grounded and ungrounded decks as ungrounded usually has a horrible low end humming noise running through it. However my pre-amp has a grounding socket on the back so I just connected the ground from the turntable to the ground on the preamp, and all traces of hummage were gone.

Hang on, do American plug sockets have Earth pins on them? Or are they just live and neutral. How does that work then, and isn't that rather unsafe.

  mcbpete said:

Hang on, do American plug sockets have Earth pins on them? Or are they just live and neutral. How does that work then, and isn't that rather unsafe.

well, our plugs TYPICALLY have a 3 prong electrical plug. two vertical skinny metal prongs [power], and a third fatter crylindrical plug [ground]. various other plugs have just the 2 electrical prongs [usually AC adaptors and such]. my house is NOT gorounded, so no third cylinder prong. however, the mixer has two grounds on it [for the tables] and the electrical plug for it is just a 2 prong! that's why i think the mixer probably grounds, regardless of the house grounding or not.

confusing? sorry, i tried::::::

No, I think I got it :grin:

I don't know how to eplain this, so it probably makes no sense.

But there's 2 different kinds of grounding, you've got the actual 'electric' grounding, with the plugs and whatnot.

Then there's the grounding of the outer casing of a unit, this is what you do when you connect the ground wires from your turntables to your mixer, the hum disappears because the wires are now connected to 'a big metal cage' so to say.

If you've got a home studio it's better to not use grounded outlets as they may cause groundloops.