Ground loop hum - would this be a safe fix? (1 Viewer)

[Brian Treinen]

OK, added an amp (AM-9080) to my Denon 3802 and now have a nasty ground loop hum. Disconnecting the cable from the back of the TV makes it go away, however, it's hard to watch TV this way... So, I checked outside and the cable grounding block wasn't connected to anything, so I ground that to the same place everything else is grounded, which helps, but the hum is still there and still goes away when disconnecting the cable. I know cheater plugs are a no-no, but I get to thinking...

How about if I get another cable grounding block and run a line of speaker wire from it to the ground screw on the back of the amp?? I think this would fix the hum, but would it be safe? I've searched here and it seems one solution for the hum is to do the single speaker wire thing connecting amp - vcr - sat box. What I'm proposing kind of does the same thing but I don't want to get zorked down the line either.

Thanks,

Brian.

 

[Trent C]

Brian,
You may want to give this a try. I had a nasty CATV ground loop hum and this fixed it up. The best thing was that I had the piece laying around, so it was a very cheap fix.
Trent

 

[Mike Matheson]

Brian,

I'd recommend calling your cable company and having one of their tech's come out to "fix your hum". Generally such service is free, so it's a good place to start. (it did work for me--we discovered the cable had not been grounded at all).

Alternately, there are a variety of other fixes, from the cheap RS adapters fix to more expensive isolators ($50-$100+) that should definitely do the trick for you.

You can probably dig up a lot of info by searching HTF for "cable hum" or similar keywords.

Regards,

Mike