Will I die?

[knadles]

Probably not, but don't screw around with grounds. They put that third pin on there for a reason.

To the "experts" saying 120V won't kill you, that's probably correct. I nicked an extension cord with the lawnmower a couple of years ago and grabbed it while standing on wet ground, and all it did was wake me up. Tasers run about 50,000V (at just a few milliamps) and they won't kill you unless you already had a heart problem.

That said, electrocution is a real way that people die. It's amperage, not voltage, that will turn you to bacon. You DO NOT want to be the easiest path to ground if something carrying 5 or 10 amps shorts to your guitar cable or amp chassis.

I will admit however, that literally dying onstage will likely get your name in at least the local papers. That might be worth something, but I'd rather do more gigs.

Pete

 

[HolmeBass]

I answered “yes” because it is a certainty that you will, eventually, die.

And to try to not speed along the inevitable, fix that power cord.

 

[agedhorse]

We had a neighbor who was an electrician as well. When we had him change a light fixture, he checked to see if the wiring was live by touching it.

I asked him, “Isn’t that dangerous?”

His response, “No. I mean, it hurts a little bit, but it’s only 120v. The 240 will make your arm hurt all day.”

Falling off the ladder is a common OSHA reportable injury for electricians. Happens more frequently when getting shocked.

 

[Axtman]

 

[Axtman]

Yes. Never remove a power cord by pulling on the wire. Pull the plug. (That's where that phrase came from.)

The reason why I am not a fan of replacement plugs is that they are typically are flimsy and wired wrong. Remember black wire goes to brass thin blade and white wire goes to wider "silver" blade.

These are terrible. The exterior metal/screws will catch on things and cut up your cord when you wind it.

These are flimsy and do not hold wires well.

These are ok.

These are the best. Spend the extra bucks and get "hospital grade".

 

[byacey]

Voltage won't do anything to you, until current flows. It's the current that does the damage.

As well, for those folks postulating that 120V isn't that dangerous, under the right conditions it certainly can kill you, stone dead.

 

[awakefie]

I remember the “oh sh*t” feeling I had upon learning that the house I sold didn’t have functioning grounds on ANY of the three prong outlets. Somehow I survived for years.

I will never buy the house of an electrician again.

This. I bought the house built by an "electrician" and his buddy. We had a bad storm and some water leaked in an cause a stain on some basement ceiling drywall. I opened it up and to my horror there were wires everywhere, no conduit, no routing staples, half the connectors had excess bare wire and generally just wires laying everywhere. Called another electrician to look at it. He said, "you're lucky nothing's happened so far". Cost a pretty penny to rewire.

 

[Axtman]

I had a high school shop teacher that told the class that he had a friend that was killed while working on his house. His friend was underneath the mobile home with a metal corded electric drill. (Nowadays corded drills are "double-insulated" and have a plastic housing.) His friend was lying on damp grass drilling up when he hit a live wire inside the house. End of story.

 

[Spectre Gunner]

View attachment 4065451

This is why cavemen and dinosaurs are extinct.

 

[abarson]

In high school in Israel a classmate was setting up the PA for an outdoor holiday ceremony. He was working alone and used a damaged extension cord. The 220VAC knocked him out and he was buried two days later.
I don't take electrical safety lightly.

 

[Eidolon0274]

If it goes wrong you get to ask these guys:

Guitarists electrocuted by their guitars

Get a new lead.

Some guy known for playing small harmonicas died from inhaling a small harmonica.

Living on the edge.

 

[g-dude]

Some guy known for playing small harmonicas died from inhaling a small harmonica.

Living on the edge.

Hopefully he didn’t go to the crossroads to sell his soul to the Devil.

 

[Plain Old Barry]

Falling off the ladder is a common OSHA reportable injury for electricians. Happens more frequently when getting shocked.

Same in telecom. The shock causes the fall which causes the injury or death.

 

[VoodooJazz]

Everyone will die eventually, unless they figure out how to make us live "forever" by turning off our aging genes, or preserving our telemeres. Problem is, even if we don't die from old age, eventually the sun's increasing output will boil the oceans, and we will all die. Of course, the next big asteroid will probably do the trick before that. Unless we figure out how to divert it well ahead of time. But nonetheless, something will get you (and all of us) soooner or later.

And let’s not forget the eventual heat death of the Universe. There’s just no winning against Thermodynamics.

 

[pie_man_25]

OP might not die, but I got an old peavey led sled for my old band for christmas for super cheap. The plug was also missing the ground pin, so I drove to princess auto and got a plug from somewhere in that store for like four bucks CAD. took me ten minutes to cut off the old plug, strip a bit of the cord and screw the wires into the correct contacts. Not a lot of hassle to get an amp that most certainly won't kill you.

 

[Obese Chess]

Statistically speaking, yes, almost certainly. Didn't read the thread.

 

[micguy]

And let’s not forget the eventual heat death of the Universe. There’s just no winning against Thermodynamics.

True, but if you’re around for that kind of timeframe, getting sucked into a black hole and issues from the collision of the Milky Way and Andromeda shouldn’t be discounted as significant threats

 

[NYCBass]

You probably won’t die but you will certainly hum until you learn the words

 

[Killed_by_Death]

These threads are weird, but interesting, how many times do we have to explain to one another how Electricity works?
I'm reminded of the CoronaVirus thread, where certain things kept getting repeated until I dropped out.

 

[Ihaveshingles]

"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones
Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born
The potential people who could have been here in my place
But who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara
Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton
We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA
So massively exceeds the set of actual people
In the teeth of those stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here
We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds
How dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state
From which the vast majority have never stirred?"
- Tuomas Holopainen, Nightwish "The Greatest Show on Earth"

And get your cord fixed.

One of the coolest statements I have heard in a long time!