How essential is an isolation transformer?

[Mark Hennessy]

It's a crazy old world, when I was in the tv trade as a bench engineer the service bench had a mains isolating transformer fitted, the soak bench behind me didn't (make sure the back's on lads)

Hanging along the side of the service bench was a death lead (amongst other leads)

Lawrence.

In fairness, the sets on soak probably wouldn't have had earthed test gear connected to them. I guess that brushing against the tube base PCB would have been the most likely way to get a bite from the back of a soaking TV? An isolation TX probably wouldn't have made much difference. Whereas an RCD would (though, depending on how far back we're talking, RCDs might not have been especially commonplace then?).

I'd love to know what the "death lead" was!