Guma15-you have same setup as me? With nothing playing and the volume raised on my Forte, I hear hiss. No hum BTW. I've swapped cartridges, still hiss. No effect when I change the capacitance settings on my turntable either. The Forte is dead quiet on all other inputs, so I'm confident the problem is within the phono chain. In fact, there is hiss when the PH1 is set to low gain, I just have to turn the Forte up higher to hear it. Admittedly, the only thing I haven't done yet is to dismantle the rack and set things up on the floor to eliminate any kind of interference, but that seems extreme. I suppose I could try another turntable as well, but it seems like I'm hearing background hiss from the Grado Phono Preamp. I never noticed it before because all of my previous cartridges were of a higher output. Grado says all amplifiers have some background hiss, I'm just hearing more of that noise relative to the signal because there is less signal to mask the noise. But it's definitely not dead quiet.
Phono Preamp for Grado Low Output Sonata1
I am currently using a Grado PH1 phono stage with a Grado Statement Sonata1 low output cartridge. I love the sound except for some background hiss (very) audible to me especially during quiet passages at moderate to high levels. Does anyone have any experience with this cartridge and if so, what preamp are you using? Associated equipment used includes HK T65C turntable, Forte 44 Preamp, Aragon 2004 Amp and The Large Advent Speakers. Musical taste is mostly rock and classical, especially well recorded and well pressed material.