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He explained that any ground fault would find its way to the neutral
How? You'd need simultaneous live-chassis and neutral-chassis faults. A live-neutral fault won't trip an RCD, because the live and neutral currents would be balanced. An RCD detects the imbalance when part of the live current bypasses the neutral return. If it's a sufficiently low impedance fault, it will trip the overcurrent or short circuit protection provided by your MCB or fuse. If you have a live-chassis fault and the chassis isn't grounded any other way, you provide the ground return when you touch it; you'd better hope in that case that your RCD does its job 😐⚡
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Also took the Quads for a checkup while I was having the front room decorated and explained my concern about the absence of chassis earthing. He explained that any ground fault would find its way to the neutral which is tethered to earth at the RCD board and it would trip. Happy about that.
I know you don’t want to hear this, but that’s really bad advice. Especially with valve equipment.
If the chassis goes live with mains it won’t trip anything. It’ll be live with 240V AC and give you a nasty shock or kill you or your kids if any of you touch it. If for whatever reason the HT makes contact with the case, which can happen on valve equipment if a capacitor goes bad or if a 60+ year old transformer shorts internally, it won’t trip anything and the case could be around 400V DC. I’ve taken 110V DC across my hands and I’m telling you now it’s not pleasant. You probably won’t get a second chance with 400V DC, it’ll just kill you instantly. So bear that in mind. You might get lucky and it’ll short an earth through another bit of equipment, but I really would earth those cases 👍
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Another option.
I use remote-control switches for my turbo trainer setup.
£33 for 5 switches
Here’s a prosaic upgrade - a foot switch socket. I was getting the hump with the Quads having no power switch, the other power amp having the power switch on the back, no easy access to the sockets and groping around for the power strip switches. So much so that I had started looking into ditching it all for an integrated amp. Now the whole lot comes on with a satisfying stamp.
Also took the Quads for a checkup while I was having the front room decorated and explained my concern about the absence of chassis earthing. He explained that any ground fault would find its way to the neutral which is tethered to earth at the RCD board and it would trip. Happy about that.
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