Today I plugged in the Crack amp with a new cable that doesn't have a ground connecting pin, but somehow the unit nolonger produce any sound so I thought my headphone had issue, while trying to unplug my headphone I got a shock by touching the surface metal plate and the headphone connector - it's not a huge shock, more of a numbing jolt, no major pain, but still, I was able to get the same shock again by placing my hand on the metal plate and headphone connector and reproduce it.
I immediately powered off everything, disconnected the power cable, disconnected headphone again, and while trying to disconnect the RCA cable, I got a similar numbing shock from the RCA connector, and even after the RCA cable is unplugged, touching the RCA connector (at this point nothing is connected to the amp) produces the same shock - no major pain, just a brief numbness.
So I thought this is definitely new, and maybe the ungrounded cable somehow charged up the capacitor in certain way that the unit starts to leak charges when disconnected with power and cables. I then proceed to reconnect my previous grounded power cable only (RCA is still disconnected, Headphone jack is still disconnected), I start the unit, then turned it off, hoping this could have somehow drained the charge to the ground. But no luck, touching the RCA connector still gives me shock after everything is unplugged.
Moving to the next experiment, wearing a safety glove, I reconnect a grounded power cable, also the RCA connector and also the headphone jack (everything is fully connected), this time playing music and music sounds fine. Then I shutdown the power and let the music played for a few more seconds through the headphone jack, hoping this could maybe drained the charge differently. Then viola, I could now touch everything without getting shocked after everything powered down!
This is quite a scary journey to be honest, as at any given time I'm touching the RCA connector to test, I was afraid the charge is going to be more intense of something, but now everything is back to normal again, no shock when touching anywhere on the surface of the unit. Still I'd like some experts to maybe help me understand what actually happened here. Was using ungrounded cable this dangerous?
