Thread: Speaking of Audio Hassles: How to Put in a Real Earth Ground

Earth; ground; tomato; tomato, let's call the whole thing off .

Originally Posted by Purpdust

I guess they do not want some dummy to put it into a potted plant

But I heard that will make my stuff sound better.

I bought it after a thread here brought up some of the cheesy quotes...not long after I was in Wal Mart and it was like $5 or something.

It's by no means a great movie, but it is kinda fun at times...

The grounding system I have consists of a heliarc'd bond at the main disconnect and Generator frame using 500 MCM rope lay SO cable welded to a 28' long, 3" OD solid copper rod and sunk 26 ft after the hole was filled with a salt brine/sulphor mix and 60 pounds of ferrous fill dirt.

This is the technique used at all the studios and transmitter towers I worked on in another life and it usually does the job (at least until some nimrod comes along and connects another disconnect to it creating a loop).

Anything less is an antenna . . .

Holy crap.

That's a big investment in a ground!

Yeah, that is not a cheap piece of metal.

You can get a roughly 12' long 3/4" or 1" at Home Depot for like $40. Don't know if it's relatively pure or an alloy.

Abtech, how long do you think a ground like that is good? I'd think with the preparations you mentioned, it'd corrode fast.

With a Micro ohm meter, you get measurement residual (.00000001 ohms) between my secondary dmark and the top of the rod (probe resistance actually). The water table around here is approximately 12 feet (), so I am well into the first layer of subterr water. The exposed portion of the ground is shrink tubed and then greased, so external corrosion isn't an issue. Subgrade corrosion would require a decent amount of O2 and it doesn't seem to be an issue, as most of the water systems here require air injection to "reveal" the iron to the systems.

We have a well system here and my ground easily exceeds any capabilities found in tying into the water lines for grounding purposes.

At the time I put it in, the 500 MCM rope lay cable (2700 strand) cost more than the rod. I think it cost around 200.00 and according to the spec it was very pure copper.

I used to do this sort of thing for a living . . .

I want to solder the cable to the rod...but there's no way my iron is getting it hot enough.

Actually your comments were helpful, I probably do have an antenna there, as you might have noticed without mentioning directly.

Maybe I'll go buy a new copper rod and pound it in and torch solder the wire to it...I never really dug the clamp.

Originally Posted by luvtolean

I want to solder the cable to the rod...but there's no way my iron is getting it hot enough.

Actually your comments were helpful, I probably do have an antenna there, as you might have noticed without mentioning directly.

Maybe I'll go buy a new copper rod and pound it in and torch solder the wire to it...I never really dug the clamp.

For wide band audio, the clamp isn't optimum, but use dialectric grease and retorque it a couple of times and you should be pretty good (especially in a rented house). With the rope lay, you hydrogen flux it, heat the rod and use a high lead/nickel rod and you get an exceptional O2 free bond. Trying to heat anything that size with an iron is next to impossible unless your iron says "Lincoln" on the side . . .