im getting shocked!!!

[Bmxbarspin724]

i have a small 10 watt crate bass amp. and it has a speaker out. and so i took a 1/4 inch jack and wired it up to to bigger speakers using some speaker wire. on the end i have some wire thingys. they are rated at like 18 awg i think. it works, but when i turn it up real loud, whenever i touch the strings it makes the noise like your conduction electricity. like when you touch the end of a 1/4 inch jack plugged into an amp.

what could this be? and how do i fix it? does it have something to do with the wiring?

[lmolter]

I'd be guessing you have a grounding problem. You didn't actually say you were getting a shock, though. It just sounds like that. Normally if you touch the end of the plug you'll pick up 60Hz hum. But... if it feels tingly, too, then I would have the wiring checked. Did you perhaps cut the ground pin on the 3-wire cord? Sometimes folks the ground pin off so they can use the amp in older wall sockets that don't have a 3-wire receptacle.

Larry

[Bmxbarspin724]

i dont get shocked all the time, but i have gotten shocked, and its happened more then once. it has a grounding pin, and it is plugged into a new wall socket.

[Mark Black]

Did you ground the 1/4" jack to the chassis? Some of those small practice amps don't like that because they actually drive both the tip & sleeve with signal. Shouldn't be enough to shock you though...

[lmolter]

Does your amp have a 'ground' switch that bypasses one side of the line or the other through a 'death cap' to ground. If the cap shorts, the chassis could be at line potential. Oh, you said you had a 3-prong plug. Never mind. You'd blow the breaker.

Larry

[Bmxbarspin724]

Did you ground the 1/4" jack to the chassis? Some of those small practice amps don't like that because they actually drive both the tip & sleeve with signal. Shouldn't be enough to shock you though...

how would i go about grounding the 1/4 jack to the chassis?

[Mark Black]

Well if you got gung-ho about adding the extension speaker and actually installed the 1/4" jack in the chassis it would be "grounded" (unless it's a plastic isolated-type jack).

If you just soldered a 1/4" jack to the speaker output leads of the amp and let it hang it's probably not grounded.

Or maybe the amp has an external speaker jack already installed from the factory, in which case: sorry for the confusion - carry on...

Oh - I just re-read your first post. You probably meant to say "plug" instead of "jack". I thought you added an output jack to the amp. Uhhh - nevermind.