OT: House wiring ideas needed

Steve Walker · 2010-12-24T03:39:36+00:00

My brother bought a house 2 years ago, and remodeled the basement. Older house, no ground wires on the overhead lights. We rewired just the wall sockets with grounds, grounded at the box. 6 outlets along one wall, and the ground at the last outlet is also attached to the incoming water pipe. Did not do overhead lights, as ceiling tiles nailed up. His band had a practice there Monday, and the 60 Hertz buzz was unbearable. I went there today to see if a bad ground existed and maybe do some testing. All wall socket wiring is good and correct. Here's where I am stumped. None of the amps buzz at all without inputs applied, even at max gain. (all amps are pro grade, no cheap stuff). plug a guitar in, and crank up the gain, unbearable buzz. Seems to be depending on where and what orientation you are holding the guitar. High end guitars, new pro grade cables. Also, plugging in a cable to any amp, without a guitar, generates a buzz. Bring it near an overhead light, on or not on, the buzz gets much louder. Same goes for any ungrounded device in the basement, on or not. Put a Klipsch Heresy speaker near the wall wiring, no leads attached, it will buzz. There are dead spots, where you can hold a hooked up guitar, with very little buzz. What to do next? They have never had this problem when practicing any where else. They have been together about 25 or 30 years, and know their equipment, none of it , other than some of the guitars, are older than 5 years, and it is all high grade stuff.

Dec 24, 2010 43 Replies

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Larry Jaques 15 years ago

Either that or set up a turntable (not phono, a lazy Susan) there. The field might be enough to warm his coffee.

-- Remember, in an emergency, dial 1911.

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Howard Eisenhauer 15 years ago

*Snip*

If your ground rod has enough juice running through it to get warm you have *SERIOUS* issues someplace, there should not, under un-faulted conditions, be any current going to ground.

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Bob Engelhardt 15 years ago

Whoa! Something else was very wrong. Ground connections & rods carry current ONLY under fault conditions. The normal, fault-free, condition is that the neutral carries all the load, including the service neutral back to the pole. A current-carrying ground means that the service neutral has a fault. Either missing/disconnected or a high-resistance connection.

Bob

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Larry Jaques 15 years ago

With all the extra circuits someone ran in the house during bedroom addons, the ground had a 40VAC tingle to it. Subsequent circuit tracing found multiple problems and we fixed it. That Old House was built in 1939 and it had the full knob & tube wiring, complete with ceramic screw-in fuses. When I redid the front bath, I found roughsawn 2" x 3" redwood and cedar studs holding it up.

-- Remember, in an emergency, dial 1911.

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