KiwiMike

Hi !!, I thought I'd better put some sort of an intro in here. I'm from the South Island of New Zealand, I originally started out as a drummer in school years back and managed to pick up the bass about 15-20 years ago. I never really had any interest in playing the 6-string guitar. I play mostly 5 string basses and have 1 4 string. I've had a rather bad run with amplifier gear in the past, so I'm going to have a crack at building my own unit, when I finally get time to. Cheers, Mike.

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' post='44809' date='Aug 14 2007, 01:05 AM']This is where a GFCI outlet protects you. Your strings are grounded, but not perfectly so, as there is resistance in all of that wire that connects your bass to your amp, and then your amp to the outlet, and finally the outlet to the street mains panel. There can be quite a bit of resistance in that wire, while alternate paths to ground, such as heating systems and water pipes, or God forbid standing on damp earth or concrete floors with no shoes on, may have considerably less resistance. Electricity always takes the path of least resistance, and in cases such as described that path is you. GFCI outlets sense when current is flowing through pathways other than those intended and shut it off.[/quote] It sounds like there could be a bad capacitor in your amp, if you are getting shocks through the strings on your bass. Often the leakage current is not high enough to trip an RCD, or because the transformer in the amp isolates the power supply from the Mains earth.