On Tue, 21 Feb 2006 18:25:35 GMT, "Doug Kanter"
wrote:

I'm familiar with musicians getting injured or killed during rain at outdoor
venues, but my band will be playing a number of clubs beginning next month,
and I'm wondering about the risks of incorrectly grounded circuits. These
are all indoor situations, by the way. Hypothetical example: Let's say I use
a circuit tester and find that the guitarist's amp is plugged into a
correctly wired outlet, but the microphone mixer is not. There's no
connection from his guitar strings to anything electrical, but there
certainly is through the body of the microphone, and perhaps the stand
itself. Is he at risk only if there are other problems within our equipment,
or at all times due to the wiring faults at the outlets?


Getting fried trying to imitate Jimmy Hendrix can be a bummer. My
suggestion is to buy several outdoor outlets that incorporate GFCI
devices. I have seen them at Home Depot and Lowes, or you can make on
up yourself.

We keep a few of them around because some of our remodeling jobs
don't have GFCI's and it is a company policy that all tools must be
connected to a GFCI device.

A GFCI should not introduce any noise into the circuit and it can
save your life, even if the power source is not properly grounded or
not grounded at all.

If your equipment trips the GFCI then you either have a fault in the
equipment or there is a problem with the power being supplied to the
GFCI.

If you go wireless, you can reduce most of the risk, but I would
still not want to get zapped while turning off an amp.

Good Luck