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Do all turntables have exterior ground wires?

bobsvinyl

bobsvinyl

Painfully Aware
Subscriber
I'm the first to admit I'm not great on the technical end of the hobby. I have always had turntables with a ground wire that hooked up to the amp or receiver. I found a beautiful Elac Miracord 50HII at a yard sale with the manual and two cartridges. It was made in West Germany and is built like a tank. I set it up and did not see a ground wire coming out. I read the manual and there was no mention of a ground wire. I put on a record and it played with no distortion.

My question is is it missing the ground or is it grounded some other way? Thanks for any help.

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Neither my Dual 701 nor my JVC QL A-2 has a separate ground wire. Matter of fact, I don't know that I've ever had a turntable that had one. I assume that the the units I've had incorporated the ground in one of the input cables as your Elac does.

BTW, that's a gorgeous table. Excellent find!
 
My two Dual 1218s, Dual 1219, Dual 1229, Elac 40, Philips 212, Technics SL2000, Garrard SL95 and Garrard SL95B all have a separate ground wire. If your Elac works fine for you without one then you are good to go. The ground wire is for hum elimination (if you get it).
 
@noogies- Thanks, Andy. I was thinking it might be in one of the cables. It's funny because every turntable I've ever owned had a separate ground wire. I bought the turntable for a song because the guy was moving and just wanted to get rid of stuff. He said he was glad it was going to a vinyl junkie. :D
 
bobsvinyl said:
My question is is it missing the ground or is it grounded some other way? Thanks for any help.
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The manual I saw at vinylengine for the 50 H II mentions the ground wire connection on page 9, including a picture that shows where it connects. But if you're not getting any hum the way it is, I agree with ramjet that there's no need to mess with it.
 
jrtrent said:
The manual I saw at vinylengine for the 50 H II mentions the ground wire connection on page 9, including a picture that shows where it connects. But if you're not getting any hum the way it is, I agree with ramjet that there's no need to mess with it.
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This was made in West Germany. I went to page 9 in my manual and there is no picture or description for installation. I was wondering if maybe the ground wire set up in the German edition was different than other versions of the 50H II.
 
bobsvinyl said:
This was made in West Germany. I went to page 9 in my manual and there is no picture or description for installation. I was wondering if maybe the ground wire set up in the German edition was different than other versions of the 50H II.
Click to expand...
Could be. And by the way, my Rega RP3 also has no separate ground wire, the manual saying, "The arm earth (or ground) is automatically connected through the arm cable screening. No other earth method should be necessary."
 
Elac grounds through the ring portion of the left rca plug. If it starts humming you clean the inside if the ring of the plug where it slips over the rca jack on your amp. In my case with my 40A it was so corroded that I had to solder on a new rca plug to the wire. Hope that clears it up. Enjoy that 50H, it's supposed to be a good one.
 
Some turntables earth the tonearm using the left channel cartridge earth wire – that is, the shield for the left channel output cable. It does work, but isn’t ideal, and can cause an earth loop in some situations, so a separate earth wire is the better engineering solution.

JVC with some turntable models (QL-A2, QL-A200 & QL-F300), used the left channel output earth for the tonearm, while other models (L-A55, L-E5, QL-5, QL-7, QL-A5, QL-F4, QL-F6, QL-Y3F, QL-Y5F, QL-Y55F & QL-Y66F) had a separate earth wire. So they weren’t consistent in their approach.
 
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