No, not a follow-on from yesterday’s post but an entirely different topic. I was planning to play guitar at church this morning and, since there isn’t always a channel free on the desk for electric guitar, was preparing to take my amp down. I’ve had the guitar amp (a Peavey Bandit) for years and it has given me excellent service. However it has seemed a bit flaky recently and I decided to pop open the plug and take a look.

It was just as well I did, as that revealed that the earth wire was free of its moorings. I think it must have been over tightened in the past and the thin strands had broken. It does not take an electrical genius to know that an earth wire that only works if it happens to rest against the right bit of the plug is extremely dangerous and so I had to fetch up my tool box and redo the plug.

The job took longer than I expected because I ended up having to free up more exposed copper at the end of each of the three wires in order to get them all fitted back without strain into the plug and I ended up not taking the guitar down since I would have missed most of the practise time. It is good to participate from within the congregation once in a while though and at least now I can be confident that my trusty little guitar amp will be reliable and, more importantly, safe for some time to come.