Electric shocks?!

V

VisualDarkness

New member
Sometimes when I play on my guitar I get a tickeling feeling in my arm and if I then touch a person while plaiying both of us gets i small electric shock. Is that normal? How do I fix that? Well I don't have any grounding in my room so I have to touch some metal on the guitar to get it quiet when distorted, could the grounding be the problem?
I would be glad if anyone could help me with this problem.
 
Re: Electric shocks?!

No, that is not normal. Stop playing and do not plug in until the problem is taken care of. Get the grounding fixed. You're lucky it's just a tingling. Yes, this is serious. No, you should not ignore it. In other words, call an electrician.

What you're experiencing is electric current going through you rather than to earth ground because that path to ground does not exist. This is a very dangerous situation. If more voltage comes down the line, it will go to you through your guitar cable and ultimately your strings and do more than just give a tingle.
 
Re: Electric shocks?!

I don't really understand how it should be grounded as the plugs in my room aren't grounded. Can you explain the whole grounding procidure to me?
 
Re: Electric shocks?!

if you are playing through an amp that isnt grounded then you could actually end up killing yourself.

no joke.

as erik said....stop playing and call an electrician.
 
Re: Electric shocks?!

ok, a small bit concerned.

My house has grounded plugs, but my amp doesn't (just has the old switchable ground thing that buzzes more on one setting). I don't ever manage to shock people, or get a tickling feeling in my arm.

How safe is this? and if I were to add a grounded plug, where would the third prong go?
 
Re: Electric shocks?!

A properly grounded circuit has the 2 blade prongs and the third prong which is ground - EARTH ground. When wired properly, the plug on the wall has that ground wire going to, well, ground.

If you have just two prongs and not the third prong, call an electrician and get that remedied. Do not just stick a 3 prong outlet in there without wiring up the third lug. That won't ground anything. That third prong needs to be wired to ground.

In today's world, depending on where you live, if in the US, ungrounded outlets are not up to code and should be changed for grounded outlets. It may require your entire room be rewired and if the whole house is like this, your entire house will need to be rewired.
 
Re: Electric shocks?!

danglybanger said:
ok, a small bit concerned.

My house has grounded plugs, but my amp doesn't (just has the old switchable ground thing that buzzes more on one setting). I don't ever manage to shock people, or get a tickling feeling in my arm.

How safe is this? and if I were to add a grounded plug, where would the third prong go?
Click to expand...

Same situation, just opposite scenario. Very dangerous. There's no path to ground from your amp. Actually, there is.....YOU!

Get the power chord on your amp changed to a 3-prong. Do not use it again until that is done.
 
Re: Electric shocks?!

ok. so basically people in the 1960s played the electric guitar at risk of dying

I have more respect for that generation now.

Bah. I'm ampless for a while...
 
Re: Electric shocks?!

A 3-prong plug still only has one ground. If you look back at your breaker box, you'll see that the white and bare are shorted together. Kinda like green and bare in a pickup. One of the safety features of a 3-prong plug was that you couldn't put the plug in backwards. In other words, you wouldn't get "hot" on the chassis. With an older 2-prong plug, you can. Try simply reversing the plug in the socket.

But even more important, you should have a competent technician, (who has the equipment and knowledge to check AC leakage), inspect your amp. You may have an old cap, or transformer thats leaking more AC onto the chassis than should be there. More modern equipment, (built in the last 30 years or so), should have a 3 - 10 meg resistor that goes from the chassis to one side of the AC cord.

I've actually seen "junior" tech's, who's meter wasn't capable of reading ohms that high, mistake the resistor for a broken short . . . and replace it with bare wire.

Flip the plug. Check the amp. Or vice-versa.
 
Re: Electric shocks?!

VisualDarkness said:
Well..my amp has a "groundedcord" but the gound in the house doesnt go into my room..
Click to expand...

Then play in some other room in your house that does have a ground. No joke, bro. As everyone else has said, that tingling is a bad sign. Play somewhere else in the meantime, and have your room grounded. If you can't do that, pick up an acoustic for a little while. No sense playing an electric if it means frying your innards -- your guitar will shred you.

- Keith
 
Re: Electric shocks?!

All right! We got a little surprise for you tonight. We're gonna turn this thread over to Aceman, lead guitar: Shock Me!

writeup.jpg


acecollage.jpg
 
Re: Electric shocks?!

VisualDarkness said:
I've that there are some cons with gounding to, is that right?
Click to expand...

There are no cons to a properly grounded circuit electrical. It's all pros. Trust us on this. Talk to your father about it.

I'm betting your room needs to be totally rewired. How old is the house?
 
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