I've broken into enough components now to be dangerous, but my learning curve is still nearly vertical. I have a newb question about circuit design...
In a battery powered preamp circuit (IOW, it's DC powered), is routing to the negative battery terminal sufficient to complete the electrical circuit or is it also necessary to connect the circuit to the metal case of the preamp? The reason I ask this question is in recently looking at some circuit diagrams for battery powered preamps, they typically show at least one ground path, but sometimes they have several (although I do understand that all of those may end up being connected at the same point). They never seem to be without the ground path, but wouldn't current flow through the circuit just by connecting to negative?
A correlary question...(it's OK if anyone wants to put this in the 'stupid' category)...when we have battery powered gear that's grounded to the case, a) why don't we get shocked when we touch the case, and b) why isn't there a shock say if the case of my preamp contacts the case of another piece of gear in my bag?