hospital grade or commercial grade receptacles ?


What is the difference ? Is it really worth ten times the price to get hospital grade receptacles ? Why ?
Is one brand really superior to another? Is Pass &
Seymore a good brand ? Hubble better ?
I am setting up a closet to house my mid-fi gear and
will be running two dedicated 20A. lines to run the
2-channel audio and the home entertainment equipment. I
will have two double (2 duplex receptacles) on each 20A
circuit.
Thank you in advance.
saki70

Showing 5 responses by rushton

Albert, good to have you back posting again. Always lively. And I AGREE WITH EVERYTHING YOU'VE SAID IN THIS THREAD. Sorry I didn't read it earlier.
.
Saki70, you've received good advice from some of the posts above. Running the two dedicated 20 amp circuits will be the biggest gain for you. Installation choices that will enhancing those dedicated circuits would include:

..Use 10 gauge wire

..Make the leap to using an isolated ground in your wiring (which means using the hospital grade connector that will not self-ground when installed in a metal box, and 4-wire cable with a ground wire -- I think the current color-coding standard is for that type cable to be manufactured in a green sheathing)

..Get both dedicated cables run to the same phase of your electrical panel, if you can. And try to put them on the other phase from heavy-duty motors and compressors: often easier said than done.

..Use non-plated all brass receptacles, as Rcrump suggests. Hubbell makes a non-plated all-brass hospital grade receptacle, but I can't find the part number right now. Pass and Seymour may have something comparable. Definitely try to stay away from nickel plated parts.

Or use one of the receptacles from: Jena Labs or Walker Audio or Albert Porter (if he still has any, often referred to here as "Porterport", a cryo'd Hubbell). The Jena Labs and Walker Audio receptacles are special production runs by Hubbell using their 30-watt chassis for heavier gauge internal parts, no steel and no plating, configured as a 20-watt receptacle, then cryo'd like Albert's. Other people will have had experience with other "audiophile" receptacles, but these would be my recommendation.

..Get some SST silver contact enhancer from Walker Audio for your electrician to use on all the connections in the circuit. Your electrician will be familiar with electrician's paste: explain that this is just a much higher grade, higher quality paste (which it is, by a huge margin). Then also use it on your power cords, interconnects and speaker cables. Try it on you main system and I think you'll be amazed at the improvement.

This is a summary coming from my experience; it's worked well here.
.
Irvrobinson, I find it interesting that someone with no posting history listed should jump into Saki70's question the way you have. I also find your contributions to this thread in no way useful. You're arguing from theory with no experimentation. So, I will repeat, I totally agree with everything Albert has said above. If you'd like to engage in some informed dialog here on this topic in this forum, I suggest you do some experimentation and then share your listening observations which may confirm or bring into question your assertions. Until then, I'm going to put you into my TROLL classification because that behavior is all that I'm seeing from you in this thread. Much of what you're arguing has been discussed endlessly on Audiogon; read some of the archives and try a few things for yourself or partner with someone who is willing to help you listen for what they hear.
.
Saki70, you are correct in your understanding of the difference between the isolated ground and non-isolated ground receptacles. If you are going to the trouble of installing an isolated ground cable runs, it's probably worthwhile to finish this off by keeping the isolated ground completely separated from the bare grounding wire loop. But, if you are using Romex cable rather than metal clad cable (or if you are installing into plastic wall boxes rather than metal boxes), and if you are using a dedicated line going to a single outlet, the use of an isolated gound receptacle probably is not as important as it might otherwise be because you are already isolating everything back to the grounding bar of your electrical panel. (Caveat: This is based purely on the reading that I've done and from what I've learned from more knowledgable folks posting here in the past; I don't claim expertise and I'd be happy to be corrected by someone who is an expert.)
.
HUBBELL model 8300IH is the non-plated, brass alloy, 20-amp Hubbell hospital grade receptacle, for those who may still care.
.