Thankfully I checked

[paggerman]

Hi all. Well, I'm back home now after 3 weeks in the USA with my family. Had a fab time. I also took advantage of the strong AUD and bought a few bits and pieces. One of the items I bought was a step up/down mains transformer. I bought this because a lot of gear I have acquired was designed for USA use @ 110 or so VAC and we get 230VAC here. It cost $39.99 delivered to the hotel in Florida. Bought from a Chicago based eBay trader. Whilst in Florida I used it to charge my electric toothbrush and that worked fine, but I felt suspicious of it - especially at that price. So this evening I got out my DMM and set it to continuity and checked for continuity between the earth contact on the plug and the earth receptacle on the outlet side of the transformer. Nothing. Jiggled the probes around. Nothing. set the DMM to resistance and found around 700Ohms of resistance between the input and output earth connection. Removed the caps at either end of the transformer and confirmed that the earth circuit was in place, using one of the cap bolts as a conductor through the core. Earth wires were connected using eyelets. A bit of faffing around later including the scraping away of lacquer on the core around the bolt hole and the use of a star washer between each earth eyelet and the core and earth continuity has been achieved. I don't know if 700Ohms of resistance is going to make all that much difference in the event of it being needed, but I'm glad I checked before plugging anything more brutal than a double insulated electric toothbrush.

Just saying.

[soundguruman]

Well, your ground is supposed to be connected at 0 ohms, not 700 ohms.
Of course it makes a difference, at 700 ohms it will overheat and burn, at 0 ohms it trips the circuit breaker.
The step down transformer you bought is for appliances, like a shaver, not audio equipment!
To run audio equipment you will need a transformer MUCH larger.

[paggerman]

The step down transformer you bought is for appliances, like a shaver, not audio equipment!
To run audio equipment you will need a transformer MUCH larger.

It's rated at 750W. It's much heavier than the one my neighbour uses for gigging his Bassman. Cheers.