Fitting a Grounding Point and Grounding the Panel
Using double insulated wallwarts and linelumps mean that you do not have to have a mains
safety earth fitted to your modular. However, if your modular is to talk to the rest of the
studio you need to make sure that the modular's 0V is tied to earth somewhere in your system.
The most usual way of doing this is via the connecting cable's shield or screen connection.
Your mixing desk or monitoring equipment will be earthed and simply connecting a cable to
any module within your modular will tie the modular's 0V to the other equipment's earth. This
seems pretty straightforward and it is so long as you have a small system and only have one or
two interconnecting cables in use.
However, a larger more complex system will have perhaps more than one modular, more than
one mixing desk and perhaps a heap of other outboard equipment. This is when it makes sense
to look at grounding your modular cases together.
The additional 4mm socket to the right of the power inlet provides a way of connecting the 0V lines
between cases
Let us consider a more simpler scenario for the moment. Say we have built ourselves two
modular cases and we would like to connect the modules in them together to form an
awesome monster patch. Each case has its own PSU and each one is powered by a Yamaha
PA-20. It is useful in this situation to ensure that both PSUs are grounded together. In other
words, the two 0V lines from each power supply are electrically connected together. Although
this will be done the moment that one patch lead goes from one case to the other it is
beneficial to do this with a dedicated thick bonding wire. The thicker the wire the lower the
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