Jim is correct.
People certainly have been killed for lack of a ground.
I will just add a couple of bits of information and you can do what you will with them Kingsley.
There certainly are horror stories of what has happened with ungrounded equipment. And therefore you might consider yourself at great risk and decide to ground your system. So I will address that.
I mentioned that I thought I recalled George recommending re-establishing a ground. I did find that in a service bulletin. But before that.
Jim, a floating ground is exactly what George was after. I have two pieces of Tice Audio Products, Inc. literature. They look pretty much identical with a couple of exceptions. What I believe is the earlier piece has Ronkonkoma, NY on Pond Road as their location.
One of the 8 bullet points under Power Block Features list "6 - 15 AMP nylon faced grounded outlets". And there are only 6 bullet points under Inside The Power Block Transformer.
What I believe is the later piece of literature with Shorewood Lane in NY as the address (but prior to Service Bulletin #5, April 1991 I believe) omits the word "grounded" when referring to the outlets. And it has 7 bullet points under the "Inside the PB Trans". The seventh bullet point being "Floating ground system Isolates your equipment from ground noise".
OK, now to service bulletin #5. Because of "Static electric buildup in digital processors and players.." and the damage that can occur. The service bulletin instructs one to take the green wire that is tie wrapped and cut the tie wrap.
Connect the green wire to the ground terminal of "one" of the outlets. I assume, although it is not stated, that one should plug the digital into that outlet.
However, it really does not matter which piece of equipment (except for sonic purposes) is plugged into the grounded outlet, as long as that piece has a three prong grounded plug. All the rest of the system will be grounded through the interconnects to that piece. Of course this does away with the "floating ground". But at least it does not re-establish the multiple ground loops that were manufactured into the first several Power Blocks.
When the first Power Blocks left the factory they did not have the provision for connecting the Titan. The Titan connection pigtail was a retrofit. I assume George figured out two or three things; 1) the added reserve of an additional huge transformer sounded even better, 2) if the pigtail was already there it made for an easier up sell of the addition of a Titan, and 3) there wasn't a good reason not to get an additional $1,100 for one more transformer per customer, since the R & D was already done.
Kingsley. If you live in a house, and not an apartment, I would recommend the following
1) Do not connect the ground wire on the Power Block.
2) Establish a new ground, ideally with a dedicated ground rod, close to your system.
3) Ground just one piece of your system. Generally the preamp sounds best.
That being said YMMV (your mileage may vary). So, once you have established a good ground get a bunch of "cheater" plugs and one by one try each individual piece as the "master ground". You can also compare that to the floating ground of the Tice, since you have not connect any green wires there.
One combination will sound considerable better. Better? Yes, less background hash, better image, more focus, depth, width, sweeter, more relaxed, yada, yada, yada.
When I was chasing down the ground loops (no hum - just not allowing the system to function at its best), I entirely missed my speakers (Martin Logan Prodigy). Of course there was a ground on EACH speaker, connected back to the system by way of the speaker wires.
Try the cheater/lifted grounds experiment. Many who have, have been blown away at what they were missing. If you don't hear any difference, then just ground everything, don't become neurotic about it, and just enjoy your music.
But you just might get a new level of enjoyment from your system.
Bruce
