Buzzing from speakers on TT rig
Looking for a little help or suggestions:
I have a Marantz TT15S1 hooked up to one of several amps. There was 0 noise in the beginning. I was using the Phono Input on the MF integrated. I added a Rogue Triton phono stage and all was good for a few days. Then the buzzing started. It was to the point where if you touch any point of the tone arm it makes weird static noises and touching the ground wire into the Rogue makes loud pops! I re-arranged the wiring and it seemed to help. Now I moved everything around on the racks and it's louder than ever. I took the Rogue out of the circuit and ran through the phono on the MF A1008 and there is still a slight buzz but not a violent snapping like with the Rogue. Ohh and I floated the ground on the Rogue and it made no difference.
Even through using only the MF phono input I can make the buzzing vary a little by wiggling the ground cable around. Very frustrated. Is there a better way to ground that may help, could it be in the cartridge or TT wiring? My digital system is 100% noise free so I think my power is ok. Rogue is being shipped back for a replacement but I hope I don't have the same thing when I receive it. Should a vinyl rig be basically noise free or should expect some static? Sorry for the long winded rambling post! I am very new to the vinyl world.
Thanks in advance for any ideas!
Jason
^^ @mofojo Yes, a new wire set would fix it. But a wire attached to the base and run to the chassis of the phono preamp likely would too. If it does not, it means that the wire that goes past the bearings of the arm to the arm tube is broken. That usually means a trip to a technician qualified to do that sort of repair- and that might mean back to the manufacturer. |
@mofojo Its really obvious your tonearm wiring has a bad (and intermittent) ground. Is the arm in warranty? If yes, I'd consider sending it back for repair; you might have to do that anyway... |
@mofojo Sounds like the arm tube isn't properly grounded. Try running the wire from the chassis of the phono section to the arm tube itself. |
@mofojo Again, try a putting a wire from the base of the arm to the phono preamp ground and see if that fixes it. If it does then you would simply make that connection more permanent. I've been doing troubleshooting since the 1970s; one rule of troubleshooting is its not worth it to speculate why something has failed when you know it did. Just fix it and move on :) |
@mofojo This means whatever is wrong was moved with the rest of the equipment. I've serviced 1000s of turntables and preamps; the most likely thing here is as I suggested earlier- a bad connection- broken wire. They can be broken inside while looking perfectly normal. |
This is very typical of an ungrounded phono setup. You mentioned that it occurs when messing with the phono cable too
- which suggests that the ground hasn't been made. Can you run a wire from the base of the tonearm to the chassis of the phono preamp? This would test that theory. Otherwise if you have a digital Voltmeter I would put it on the Ohms scale and measure for continuity between the bass of the arm (or other metal part of the arm) and the end of the ground wire. If that measures nearly 0 Ohms then the phono section is suspect. If it measures much higher then the ground wire has a bad connection. |
