A warm tingly feeling

So anyway, I am powering down my lair. It consists of turntable, crossfader, mixing desk, external sound card, pc etc. Everything is off (except for the pc). I notice that when I brush my fingers against the line in jacks (standard RCA) on any of the pieces of equipment (even the lines out on the turntable), a tingle travels up my forearm. This is new.

I am standing on a tiled floor in my socks. Both feet need to be touching the ground for this to happen. Standing in my slippers doesn’t work. If I make a complete circuit (if that is indeed what it is) between left and right lines in with, say, thumb and forefinger, it doesn’t work. Even if I just pinch one of the sockets with thumb and forefinger it doesn’t work.

What’s going on here? The feeling is kinda equivalent to putting your tongue on a 9V battery (I am pretty thick at times, but I’m not so stupid as to lick the back of my stuff, I promise). I just turned the stuff back on and it seems to be fine.

What will the consequences of my actions be (other than cheap thrills)? Am I likely to fry a squillion nt of hardware? Will the feeling one day cause my arrythmic heart to tick its final tock? What are the chances of a healthy blast of electricity sending me crashing into the living room (other than the ‘normal’ chances one takes with the electricity here)?

I am a dunce when it comes to these things, so if there is any advice it would be appreciated. I guess I need to earth this stuff?

Thanks.

That’s because they don’t have an earth in Taiwan. :unamused: It’s quite normal here, and noone can see anything wrong with it.
Here’s a thread about it : forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.php?t=10427

I guess you mean the electricity earth jobby, but that’s pretty funny for ambiguous reasons too!

Anyway, thanks for the link. I am now thoroughly confused. Why does everyone else know about these things, but not I?! I only slept through chemistry, not physics.

So what is happening to all this electricity when I am / something else is not earthing it? Does it build up into a massive charge, ready to throw blue bolts of energy? Or is it quite harmless?

Actually it’s quite beneficial to have a mild electric current travel through your body almost daily. It minimizes the number of negative ions present in your muscles, so perhaps you will feel less tension and soreness as a result. However, your significant other might find it shocking to attempt kissing you at a time you are touching ungrounded metal.

Nothing. If there isn’t any conductor (you or something), then no current will flow and no harm will be done.

No, it’s probably harmless. There is nothing to store that energy, so it can’t build up and fry you.

I am intrigued by this… I could certainly use less tension right now.

I asked her to just give it a little touch to see how it felt for her (ooh…), and there were accusations of no love being left, threats of me experiencing involuntary abstinence, and general all round pandemonium. She believes I have serious problems if I want to carry on doing this voluntarily.

I touched my elbow to one of the jacks and that hurt. Any ideas why, when the finger just gets tingly? Sorry to harp on about this, but I’m just interested. The most informal fun I’ve had with electricity before has been to stick balloons to the ceiling.

Also had a weird problem with this. Was doing some PC work that required frequent case openings, replacing boards etc. Anyway, touching any exposed metal part of the case provided a mild shock when the PSU was still plugged in, not pleasant and potentially damaging to the equipment. Rather than having to keep unplugging the power lead, I found a trailing lead with an Off switch. Was pretty surprised to still get a shock when the power was turned off with the switch :shock: ! Thinking it might be a couple of caps still charged up, I experimented with unplugging Vs the off switch, only get a shock when using the switch, weird. Tried a couple of different brands of power strips, all with the same result. Only conclusion I can come to is that the switch is turning off the ‘live’ wire and the ‘neutral’ is somehow supplying a current…odd.