Isolated Ground causes ground hum.


Hi Experienced Goner.
I am adding the isolated ground into my music system and when I connected the ground wire into my existing system and it hums badly.
Did I do st wrong?
 Thanks 
Calvin
dangcaonguyen
The problem is not the CJ amplifier, it's the extra ground. The earth is a poor conductor and that results in steady state potential in the ground -- which is the source of your humming.

An extra ground is not a good idea. Lightning surges isn't the only problem -- transient spikes occur all the time, such as utilities switching  capacitor banks and on-site generating facilities switching loads from utility to generators, any of which can produce transients to fry your electronics connected on a grounding system with a potential across it.
Hi everyone,
The humming problem is solved. I want to report back on what I have done to it.
1) Connected the ground to the conduit metal outlet box.
2) Connected the Isolated Ground (from my ground post) to the ground pin of the IGR receptacle.
3) The hot and neutral are connected as normal.
I changed the 4awg solid copper bare wire to 6awg insulated strained wire to match with the NEC code.
Result: The sound has improved by not a small margin. In all directions, soundstage, bass, image... you name it.
The only concern I have for now is how to protect my system from the lightning as Jim mentioned.
$100.00 well spent.
Calvin

2) Connected the Isolated Ground (from my ground post) to the ground pin of the IGR receptacle.
Dangerous and against Code. In the event of a hot to chassis ground fault event, of a piece of audio equipment plugged into the IG receptacle, there is not a low resistive path for the ground fault current to travel back to the source, the electrical panel. The breaker that feeds the branch circuit will never trip open. In fact there is a good chance the chassis of the piece of equipment would be Hot, energized, with respect to any other grounded item that is connected to the main electrical service equipment ground. An electrical shock, or worse, electrocution hazard.

I also suggest you reread erik-squires and gs5556 posts.

Again.... The earth does not posses some mystical magical power that sucks nasties from audio equipment. If anything it can add noise. You won’t find any well respected EE that will tell you otherwise.

3)
I changed the 4awg solid copper bare wire to 6awg insulated strained wire to match with the NEC code.
#6 is bare minimum. You can use larger.

Did you click on the Link with the video I supplied in an earlier post?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlnFNTay-9Q

That guy talking helps write NEC Code.

Thank you everyone,
I will remove the isolated ground system and put my music system back as before.
One last question:
Do I have to remove all the ground rods I already planted is in the ground? Is there any issue if I keep them there? Its kind of hard to remove those rods now.
Thank you all for your help.
Calvin
dangcaonguyen
Do I have to remove all the ground rods I already planted is in the ground?
No, you could bond them together with your other existing ground rods.