Cheater Plugs

Anything plugging into the Panamax's, need to plug in without any additional adapters. As long as the protectors are good, and your ground is knowing to be good from the outlets back to the breaker panel, you should be good to go.

Yes, plug all plugs that are three prong into the panamax. To add, there are three prong cheater cords, that do not have the third prong on them, but will still plug into the female end. One of the purposes of having a ground for the equipment, is that if there is ever a surge or spike, it goes shortest path to ground. With the Panamax, the grounds would be isolated as the same with a regular surge protector.

As long as your ground at the breaker panel is bonded either to a cold water pipe that is also bonded to earth ground (ie no plastic or PEX piping in the path, and exits the foundation out to buried copper pipe to the meter), or connected to Earth ground via Ufer or ground rod, you hope that if a surge or spike does happen, if it came in on either the hot leg or neutral leg of the path, it should exit back to ground to exit along the bonded earth ground.

I use not only a whole house panel surge protector, but also use surge protectors on all of my electronic equipment. You should have the same layer of protection also. Do not just depend on the Panamax to do all of the protecting.

No, this is not the reason for having a safety ground at all. Another misconception by Greg, that's all.
Safety ground provides a path to ground in case of a short between the hot wire and the conductive enclosure.


Of course, neutral is already bonded to ground.

Do not use cheater plugs with your Panamax.

The negative is that you create a possible shock hazard. What are the positives? Avoiding a ground loop?

The whole 3 conductor plug has been effed up by the audio industry, and maybe others. The 3rd prong was never supposed to be a signal conductor, only a safety factor for a conductive chassis. But some audio makers, when using a 3prong plug, tie the signal ground to the chassis ground, in the equipment itself. I don't really understand how they get away with this, but they do. Why not just leave the signal ground on the neutral (like two prong plug components), and leave the ground conductor strictly for the chassis? What doesn't make sense, is that both the neutral and third prong tie back to the exact same point in the service panel! So what have they gained, except doubling up their 'ground'?

I've asked EE's, and even several 'authorities on electricity' that provide our electrical safety training at work. One of them even works writing codes for the NEC. All clueless about the issue of 3prong use in audio equipment.

Oh well, I've rambled enough. Rule of thumb is don't defeat the safety ground. If you end up with ground loop noise (hum), try instead to find the source and correct the problem there if possible.

Why?
The negatives are that you're defeating safety ground...it's called that for a reason.


because floating grounds are not desirable?


What if someone uses a cheater, lifts ground and reverses polarity, now you have 120V on your signal ground.


Read up on electrical distribution systems for the answer.


EE's are clueless, it's you laymen who have all the smarts