Re: looking for balanced power conditioner.

Dan Mills <dmills@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
There are a couple of things to be majorly careful of doing this in a EU
context:

Most gear over is only fused in one leg, so you will need to supply
appropriate measures to deal with this.

Now, I thought the EU required switches and fuses on both legs now? I am
always listening to American manufacturers bitching about how they are
forced to add these things when they aren't necessary in the US.

With only 120V to earth, will you still make the disconnect times required
by whatever the Irish version of BS7671 is?

Hmm... I never thought about that. That's an interesting point.

RCD(GFCI) protection of the connected loads is good, but must cut both
poles (not all do).

Probably not good, actually, since one of the big advantages of balanced
power is being able to deal with clapped-out guitar amps that have major
chassis leakage issues.

Finally, remember that a fault from the 'neutral' to the case of any bit
go gear has the potential to put 120V on it (rather more dangerous then
the 60V you get for the same fault in the states).

True, but still less hazardous than 240V.

There is no reason to pay the crazy inflated prices of the audio
accesory guys for what is basically a cheap power transformer.

Agreed, but IMHO you can get almost all the advantages with just a
correctly thought out rewire with due attention to the grounding scheme.

Regards, Dan (Who does not really buy the whole balanced power thing).

The one advantage that balanced power gives you is the ability to deal
with chassis leakage problems. This is pretty meaningless in the context
of well-designed and well-maintained equipment, but in the context of using
crappy PCs with Taiwanese switching supplies and badly-maintained guitar amps
with leaky line filter caps, it can be a good thing. It's a useful tool
for a problem folks occasionally encounter and it's worth keeping a little
200W balanced isolation box around for when you encounter it.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
.

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