Natural Sound
- Thread starter PeterA
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This is highly illegal and how people kill their grand kids, dog, meter reader etc. Its not at all correct in how to properly ground an audio system. It also sets you up for disastrous damage to your equipment if lightning ever strikes the ground near your home. I'm surprised Davids electrician would do this for you. I would say no. I won't do it. Pull it out and connect the grounds up per the NEC.
Sorry to be hard, but it really bothers me when people post such nonsense and forum readers get the idea to try it on their own systems. Again, it is a sure way to kill people. Don't ever do this.
I'm north of the border - but that arrangement would be highly illegal here. FWIW.
Peter, Before your electrician comes back, work with me. Let me draw you a plan. And by plan I mean a detailed layout of how your panel and grounding should be installed. I have images to provide your electrician because I know how much electricians don't like paper work and hate to read.
Your on the right path. There are some finer details that will give the sense of quite you are getting by lifting the ground in your system, which is what you are doing now. If you feel the need to lift the ground, do it at the receptacle. That way, any failure only electrocutes you when you touch the amp. Or use a Ebtech HumX. But you don't need that stuff. You just need to connect up what you have properly. A lot of smart minds are on the code body that writes the NEC and CSA. Grounding done right works excellent.
Your on the right path. There are some finer details that will give the sense of quite you are getting by lifting the ground in your system, which is what you are doing now. If you feel the need to lift the ground, do it at the receptacle. That way, any failure only electrocutes you when you touch the amp. Or use a Ebtech HumX. But you don't need that stuff. You just need to connect up what you have properly. A lot of smart minds are on the code body that writes the NEC and CSA. Grounding done right works excellent.
Are you using ground cheaters on the mains plugs? The 50 feet added to the separate ground wires defines a rather large area and coiling them does not help.
So the only question I have for Peter is if the ground is still connected to neutral bar? If it is not then yes, this is more dangerous. But it’s not really any different than 70’s years ago.
70 years ago electrical usage equipment was much different. It was lights and a few household appliances. And the code became more stringent as people were electrocuted using these devices.
When a grounded pieces of equipment like a amp, preamp, dac, server, PS for TT, whatever, when a fault in that equipment goes to ground, the ground wire routes the fault to the neutral in the main service panel which loops back through the hot phase circut breaker and opens the circuit. It actually goes out the the utility transformer and comes back, but that is deeper than need to know here.
If the ground is attached to a rod in the earth, and a fault to ground occurs in any equipment, the current goes to the rod and into the earth. The resistance of earth is to low to get back into the neutral and over to the circuit breaker to open the circuit. So it sits there festering in the earth.
Before I had my earth ground resistance tester, I decided to hot dog a resistance test of my concrete encased electrode. I attached a wire to a 20 amp CB, held it with a pair of pliers, stood on a piece of wood in thick rubber boots, put a clamp ohm meter around the wire and touched the wire to my earth electrode. I read 16 amps at 120 volts. Thats a Boulder size load of power going into the earth looking for a better path back to the neutral. But not so much the CB would ever open. Its also a really good ground, but I digress. So what happens when your kids or the neighbors are out back playing in the summer, in their bare feet and one goes to grab the hose and spray a friend. If that water pipe is copper, the kid will lock on and never let go. That is a dead person. That plane in the earth is large to. It could be a neighbor in an adjacent house that goes to mess with his cable TV coax cable who gets it. As I said earlier, it actually goes out and back through the utility transformer, so any home connected to the utility grid is a path back and subject to electrocution.
When a grounded pieces of equipment like a amp, preamp, dac, server, PS for TT, whatever, when a fault in that equipment goes to ground, the ground wire routes the fault to the neutral in the main service panel which loops back through the hot phase circut breaker and opens the circuit. It actually goes out the the utility transformer and comes back, but that is deeper than need to know here.
If the ground is attached to a rod in the earth, and a fault to ground occurs in any equipment, the current goes to the rod and into the earth. The resistance of earth is to low to get back into the neutral and over to the circuit breaker to open the circuit. So it sits there festering in the earth.
Before I had my earth ground resistance tester, I decided to hot dog a resistance test of my concrete encased electrode. I attached a wire to a 20 amp CB, held it with a pair of pliers, stood on a piece of wood in thick rubber boots, put a clamp ohm meter around the wire and touched the wire to my earth electrode. I read 16 amps at 120 volts. Thats a Boulder size load of power going into the earth looking for a better path back to the neutral. But not so much the CB would ever open. Its also a really good ground, but I digress. So what happens when your kids or the neighbors are out back playing in the summer, in their bare feet and one goes to grab the hose and spray a friend. If that water pipe is copper, the kid will lock on and never let go. That is a dead person. That plane in the earth is large to. It could be a neighbor in an adjacent house that goes to mess with his cable TV coax cable who gets it. As I said earlier, it actually goes out and back through the utility transformer, so any home connected to the utility grid is a path back and subject to electrocution.
The evolution of Colibrí: XPP, Master Signature, Grand Cru, GC Elite. I would love to have an early Stradivarius.
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What can you tell us about the Grand Cru Elite. I did not know there was a cartridge with that name.
Thank you Brian. Had the magnet not passed through that tight space, I would simply have used the strobe disc to set speed. The road runner is darn accurate. I made a video a while ago showing both the road runner digital readout and the Sutherland timeline strobe record weight. They seemed to match.
Every time you show pics of your table Peter I get a little envious. Elegant and robust at the same time.
Hi Tim. I cannot tell you much. Mr. van den Hul built the cartridge a few months ago and sent it to me. He referred to it as the “Elite“ in a series of emails to me. After a month of listening to it, I shared with him my listening impressions. I do not know what he did to make it sound different, but I can say it has a lighter tracking force and I think the suspension is different. I have been using 1.25 grams.
This is my favorite sounding of the four Colibrís I own. It is the most nuanced and natural sounding. After a week of listening to it, I sent my master signature and grand cru to him for modification. Unfortunately they got hung up in customs in Amsterdam for three months and were returned to me without ever getting to his shop for modification. I will probably send one at a time to him next and use a different carrier. I thought they had been lost forever, so I’m glad I at least got them back unharmed.
These cartridges are always a mystery. I collect them because I do not know how much longer they will be produced. I have not heard any modern cartridge I like as much, and only David’s Neumann do I like more. I do very much enjoy my vintage Technics moving magnet. It has all the nuance of the Colibrí‘s and slightly more weight or as David describes it “mass”, but it does not have as much resolution as the Colibri‘s.
Compared to the Master Signature and the regular Grand Cru, the Elite seems to have just a little bit more spatial information and resolution. Perhaps a shade more nuance and balanced sound. Extension seems the same. All of my newer Colibrí‘s now have low outputs of 0.25 mV and 0.35 mV. The XPP has 0.4mV.
I haven’t heard a modern cartridge I can wholly endorse. And if I did then I didn’t know it because the electronics/speakers may have masked some of the magic.
It’s a bit of a concern…
It’s a bit of a concern…
Thank you Bob. It is a true thing of beauty and quite massive. It is a very complete design. It is the culmination of the design efforts of one of the premier turntable manufacturers during the height of the vinyl era. It is the pinnacle achievement from the company.
I am so grateful to David Karmeli for finding me one in such good condition. His search resulted in locating two different samples, mine first and then a second one. A good friend of mine heard my turntable for about an hour and then contacted David to buy the second one.
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Folsom, we try to understand what we can. Can we ever be truly sure? Each link is just one in the chain interacting with the rest. I have learned not to worry about it too much.
The lack of weight of vdh has always been a factor.
When I wrote my report after Tang's visit, I said if I had to own only one cart, then I would have the Opus as it was more balanced. If I had to have two, I would first the vdh as it was much superior to the Opus on many other factors, and I would get a second cart to balance out what vdh cannot do.
My other comments on the weight of vdh from posts in 2018:
"I did expect the slight leanness in midbass to be highlighted more in Mike's system than any others that I have heard, and for him to move on from vdh, which is why I asked him specifically if it fills up the midbass in his system".
" It can slam on the tympani, but can show a leanness in midbass."
"I am not saying vdh has issues across all that range, but usually it's in weight, and cello. Tympani is fast and tight, but the weight is slightly less."
When someone had got the GC first (I don't remember if it was you or Tang), my question was if adds weight retaining the magic of the master sig.
When I wrote my report after Tang's visit, I said if I had to own only one cart, then I would have the Opus as it was more balanced. If I had to have two, I would first the vdh as it was much superior to the Opus on many other factors, and I would get a second cart to balance out what vdh cannot do.
My other comments on the weight of vdh from posts in 2018:
"I did expect the slight leanness in midbass to be highlighted more in Mike's system than any others that I have heard, and for him to move on from vdh, which is why I asked him specifically if it fills up the midbass in his system".
" It can slam on the tympani, but can show a leanness in midbass."
"I am not saying vdh has issues across all that range, but usually it's in weight, and cello. Tympani is fast and tight, but the weight is slightly less."
When someone had got the GC first (I don't remember if it was you or Tang), my question was if adds weight retaining the magic of the master sig.
There is some semantic confusion going on here between grounding and earth
i commend to you this excellent article
https://www.jensen-transformers.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/generic-seminar.pdf
and the most important diagram in the article
note that correctly wired there should never be any current through to the earth rod
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