3 Wire AC Safety Power Cords

Why install a 3-wire safety AC cord?

If your vintage gear has a two-wire AC cord, here's the problem.

Your radio chassis relies only on an attached earth ground to be safe! This was the "old" way of doing things; it was quite acceptable to do it this way prior to the NEC specs in 1985.

In addition, most old rigs and old power supplies will have a couple of ceramic disk capacitors of a value of 0.01 or 0.001uF between both AC incoming lines and the chassis. This leaves the chassis at 60-120vac to ground, as measured by a high-impedance voltmeter, or as felt by a (grounded) human being! This explains the "tingle" you will feel when you are hooking up earth ground or a grounded antenna circuit to a vintage radio that is already plugged into the wall outlet.

All of our "full Monty" repair deals will include a 3-wire, AC power cord and grommet installation OPTION. You don't have to have this done, but we HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT for your STATION SAFETY. The AC ground will bleed off any dangerous leakage current from the radio chassis, and may improve operation of an old receiver by quieting things down quite a bit vis-a-vis electrical noises and hash. In addition, if you end up connecting any sensitive electronic equipment such as solid state wattmeters, autotuners, computers, etc to your vintage gear, the 3 wire cord will help prevent damage to these peripherals from such leakage currents.

If you do NOT want the 3 wire cord and grommet installed, you MUST state so in writing before we begin repairs. This can be in an email, or in the incoming repair form; it will become a permanent record here. Again, we HIGHLY RECOMMEND the installation of a 3 wire grounded AC power cord to your vintage gear.