Dedicated line

Johnmhuntbch, What did you do at Ga. Power. I myself was at FP&L. for 15 years. Would like to hear from you. Thanks, Skip.

Thanks for your responses everyone. I am very grateful, I realise that this is truly a great hobby. I have printed all your responses to my questions regarding the problem hum I am experiencing and reading them carefully. I am going to plug my solidstate (ss) system to do some testing. I don't want to do this on my tube equipment for fear of damaging them as I would have to switch on/off many times to try some of the suggestions. Sol322, the dedicated line was installed by a professional. Pending the outcome of the ss test, I will get him back for any other required adjustments, as this is definitely NOT my area of expertise. Here are more details on how I connected my equipment. TO DEDICATED LINE- 2 scenarios that caused the hum to occur 1) ALL equipment through a power conditioner to one outlet 2) ALL equipment directly to the newly installed dedicated outlets. I have pre/power/CD so I used only 3 outlets. TO COMMON LINE- Same connection as above scenarios but this time to common outlets. Note my common line has no ground connection. Result is NO HJM! I will post ss results, sometime tomorrow, July 11. Many thanks again to all. Best regards.

The humming noise in my system was SUCCESSFULLY ELIMINATED today!!! Here's the sequence of events. After getting similar results from the ss equipment I called the electrician back to re-check the connections. Here's how the problem was identified. The fuse box is located in the basement and in order to lay the dedicated ground wire he ran the BARE ground wire from the circuit box to the exterior of the house through the ceiling. Inadvertently while pushing the ground wire through it got CROSSED WITH THE CABLE TV WIRE also located between floors in the ceiling! It took a loooong time to come to this conclusion. We conducted several tests and notice that when the dedicated ground line was disconnected the hum disappeared. I then told him that we should lay a new ground line this time burying the ground plate deeper. While he was pulling the ground wire from the ceiling we discovered that it was tangled with the cable line in the ceiling, note there's a cable splitter and that must have been the point of contact, bare ground wire to splitter. My conclusion is that the hum was caused by a ground loop that occurred between the dedicated ground wire and the cable wire. The ground wire is now not touching any other wire and the hum has disappeared. Thank goodness. This problem was driving me crazy. What do I think about the sound? For now I am just RELIEVED and happy that there's no humming noise. I can't objectively comment about the sound because I changed my whole set of tubes in the pre & power before I disconnected my tube equipment just to make sure it was not a run-off tube making the hum. I will put the old set on again and listen in the next few days. Will post my findings on this thread next week. A very BIG THANK YOU to all of you with much appreciation for your kindness and great advice. Best regards.

Following is a summary of the result of tests made on my newly installed dedicated power AC line. Different combinations tested: pre/power/cd player plugged direct or through a power conditioner (PC) to the dedicate line. Best results for my system is cd player and pre-amp plugged direct to dedicate line and power amp through PC to dedicated line. Benefits: reduction of background noise and improved resolution. Very good return on cost / benefit ratio. I ended spending slightly less that $500 (12/3 AWG, ground plate with 6 gauge bare ground wire, 2 Square D breaker, 2 Wattagate outlets and electrician cost), the amount would have been greater if I had use an audio grade electrical line but the cost / benefit ratio would diminish in returns. On a scale of 1 to 5 this is a 3.5 stars upgrade to sound quality and a 4.5 stars upgrade in value for money. If the same amount of $ was spent on upgrading my equipment I don't think I would have achieved an equivalent return. I would certainly recommend this upgrade; perhaps a 10 AWG would yield better results.