“Ground all around.” It could be a song about grounding schemes. We could do it in the style of the old Schoolhouse Rock stuff. Okay, smack me. I’m still a little weary from yesterday – had one of those dreaded birthday things.
“I recently built a studio in my basement, without thinking of researching past issues of inSync for valuable insight into ways to avoid the old 60 cycle ground loop hum [Ed- Yer’ killin’ me]. Shame on me. So now I’ve got extension cords running from one AC outlet to everything, which sort of ruins the aesthetics of a new studio. BUT I thought of a solution and hoped you guys could tell me if it would work.
I’m in a basement. On the other side of that concrete foundation is ‘ground all around.’ Can I bore a hole through the concrete next to each of my now useless electrical outlets, insert a 2 to 4 foot copper ground rod into the hole, and ground each AC outlet to it’s own ground rod? Will this eliminate the hum?”
I don’t know how much rain you get where you live, but the idea of drilling holes in the walls of my basement would freak me out big time. I’ve seen people spend BIG bucks to keep water out of their basements so I wouldn’t even consider this option, even if it would work.
Keep in mind that most of the time the hum you are experiencing is caused, or at least exasperated by a ground loop. The cause of the loop, multiple paths to ground, is not really solved by grounding each outlet to the outside. Saying all that, I can’t promise that it wouldn’t help in your situation. But I wouldn’t drill holes in my basement to find out. It’s possible that your hum could be coming from fluorescent lights (often used in basements) or some other EMI source that’s in the basement so definitely take a look around and see if you can find a source like that. Try disconnecting everything in the basement from electricity except your studio and see what happens. You may be surprised. Otherwise you are back to Grounding 101, and just have to try all of the established tricks of the trade to find the best solution to you. It may be worth rewiring the wall outlets so they all come from one circuit breaker. This doesn’t totally get rid of ground loops, but can reduce them enough to be workable, especially if you can lift some of the signal grounds on balanced lines.