ground loop in the house?

[amplifiednation]

Thanks paulster. I will pick one up and get to work tomorrow

[passfan]

You need to hire a competent electrician. There are so many variables and possibilities involved with what your checking out. You can be electrocuted off the neutral. Current travels on the neutral. Have someone rip all that crap out and rewire your basement for what you need. Get the fridge on it's own circuit. Use incandescent lighting. The voltage on your neutral could be coming from a bad appliance and not your electrical wiring. Above all remember, more people are killed by 120 volts than any other voltage.

[amplifiednation]

I guess the one thing that baffles me is the home inspector when we purchased the house didn't say anything about that wiring. I'm going to take your advice and get an electrician to come over. I do all my work down there for building amps and doing restorations and tolex, so the florescents are great for seeing, but horrible for hearing.

If I can find a few track lights cheap i think i can get the same level of brightness without all the wires and the hum...and maybe I can even put them on a dimmer!!

What does everyone else use for amp-work lighting?

[paulster]

Dimmers, unless you use a rheostat/variac, can be electrically noisier than fluorescents because they chop the AC waveform each half-cycle to effectively pulse-width modulate the AC supply rather than actually reduce the level of the sine wave.

The home inspector may have looked at the wiring and though it was messy but that doesn't imply dangerous. Your own observations have suggested that it may be wired incorrectly, with either a non-existent or poor ground, but you can't tell that from a visual inspection.

Have you tested the basics yet with an outlet tester or a DMM?

[C Moore]

Trust me on this.....The easiest and BEST solution is to leave everything just as it is. Install a dedicated circuit to run your audio/music gear from. Make sure that dedicated circuit has its own ground rod as well. Any noise you hear after that is RF...you pretty much just have to learn to live with RF noise.
Good Luck