Got a new (to me) older audio stack. Not used to some of the earlier electronics conventions.
The system has two pronged cords, and has external grounding. How much danger am I looking at here? I’m not 100% certain how to use it properly.
Got a new (to me) older audio stack. Not used to some of the earlier electronics conventions.
The system has two pronged cords, and has external grounding. How much danger am I looking at here? I’m not 100% certain how to use it properly.
I’d see if you can find a circuit diagram for the equipment, then compare it against what you actually have.
It might be that there was a genuine issue with the equipment that was fixed, or it might be that the fix was actually something else entirely.
There’s no way for us to know what you’re dealing with.
I have the manuals and I can check those. I can also easily get the model numbers off the units. Are diagrams something that you can find for old hardware online?
And I appreciate the assistance. My background is in computer science, so my electrical engineering abilities are slim.
Fellow computer geek here … also a radio amateur.
No idea what the availability of circuit diagrams is for your gear. In amateur radio equipment the user manual regularly has them, sometimes as big foldout sheets. I’d be surprised if they didn’t exist.
Thanks for the information. The two units are by Fisher an FM-2421 and CC-3000.
I’m not seeing full circuit diagrams, but they do have some information on what to wire up.
Antenna ground needs to be used for signal to be read properly.
Turntable audio grounding (different from electrical power grounding) may help prevent hums when the common 0V grounding passes by the power ground.
That is what it looked like, but that surprised me. My turntable is more modern and doesn’t require a ground. As for the antenna, yes, that makes sense!
But am I misreading something… neither of those seems like an actual dangerous situation? Oddly enough the components that I would normally guess were more dangerous (specifically the pre-amp and amp) don’t seem to have a ground circuit exposed despite the two-prong set-up.
They don’t have a power ground to prevent hums. There might be a marginal risk if something comes loose in the amp, but your modern electrical cabinet would have a differential switch to save you in that case. I remember my audio engineer degrounding one of my audio components when in had the issue.
My guess for the audio ground is that older turntables had poorer electrical isolation and power lines were more noisy. For more technical explanations we need an old school audio engineer.
I’m hoping this means that the system is probably safe to use? XD
I’m not really finding grounding needs on any of the other equipment. Even though the power amp, for instance, is something that I would associate with more danger and it only has two prongs, there doesn’t seem to be exposed ground circuitry.