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I finally figured out why my old Rega turntable was humming after I moved it to a different wall outlet at my buddy's cabin up near Lake Tahoe last summer

Turns out the ground wire was picking up interference from the fridge compressor cycling on and off - has anyone else dealt with weird hum issues that only show up in certain rooms or buildings?
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3 Comments
victor_carr25
Man, that's a head-scratcher for sure... My buddy had a similar thing with his guitar amp at a rented beach house. It would hum like crazy every time the old freezer in the garage kicked on. Took us forever to realize the wiring in that place was all jacked up and the ground loop was feeding right into his gear.
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spencer_hayes71
Not quite a ground loop though, @victor_carr25, that's more of a wiring or shared neutral issue causing the hum. Ground loops happen when there's two different ground paths with different voltages, like plugging gear into different outlets on separate circuits. Still a pain to track down either way, just a different flavor of electrical gremlins.
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victor_carr25
Is it really that big of a deal though? I mean a little hum never killed nobody. People get way too worked up over this stuff.
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