[BlackCat]

Thank you for your advice Andy.  After further research, the fourth wire is a "body ground", I don't know the right term.  You hook it up so it touches the body of the power strip.  On the plug side, you interweave it with the ground wire and attach to the ground connection.

I have the 120V Eagle hospital grade receptacles in series or daisy-chained as you mentioned.  If you look at the PS Audio website, they say that one of the reasons their $200 Juice Bar is so good is that the receptacles are "star wired", they don't tell you how, but do say it is to reduce any crud or hash a piece of equipment might put back onto the AC, which in a series configuration would transmit this hash to the rest of the components hooked up to the power strip.  The DIY power strip / box I mentioned is at:

http://www.audiotweaks.com/diy/ac_outletc/page01.htm

I'm basically following this recipe, except I'm using a power strip body I got from Home Despot, that has 6 receptacles.  So, if anyone knows what star wiring is...I'd like to give it a try.

[andyr]

Thank you for your advice Andy.  After further research, the fourth wire is a "body ground", I don't know the right term.  You hook it up so it touches the body of the power strip.  On the plug side, you interweave it with the ground wire and attach to the ground connection.

I have the 120V Eagle hospital grade receptacles in series or daisy-chained as you mentioned.  If you look at the PS Audio website, they say that one of the reasons their $200 Juice Bar is so good is that the receptacles are "star wired", they don't tell you how, but do say it is to reduce any crud or hash a piece of equipment might put back onto the AC, which in a series configuration would transmit this hash to the rest of the components hooked up to the power strip.  The DIY power strip / box I mentioned is at:

http://www.audiotweaks.com/diy/ac_outletc/page01.htm

I'm basically following this recipe, except I'm using a power strip body I got from Home Despot, that has 6 receptacles.  So, if anyone knows what star wiring is...I'd like to give it a try.

Well, star wiring would be to join the 'active' and 'passive' wires which go to each individual receptacle, back to two connectors at the 'start' of the power outlet, where the mains cord comes in - ie. the 'active' splits into 6 and so does the 'passive' (and the earth too, so you need 3 connectors).

I think this would have a minimal effect on stopping 'power grunge' from jumping from one receptacle to the next.

Regards,

Andy