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

So from right by the cartridge it was 18ohms and under where the tone arms attaches under the table was 0ohms at a small screw. Went with a ground from the preamp to a small nut on the lower part of the attachment point and knocked it out completely…. Silence … perfect. I took it off and on a few times by hand and it stayed all good for about a half hour. Then it was back even worse. Ended up doing a ground from preamp to the anti skate nut and so far seems to be fine. Obviously “I think?” It’s in the cable that’s permanently connected to the tone arm. Weird thing is when I tried several days before in all those same grounding scenarios it would not go away. Pretty sure it’s coming back and maybe I should figure out how to order a new complete cable set? 

Oh for Christs sake. It’s back lol. Gonna bring the table up tomorrow and monkey around with how this cable set connects to different things I guess. Just wrote that and was playing downstairs for 20 min just went down to shut the system down. 

@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...

I don’t believe it’s under warranty, I bought it used but will look into it. When you say the tone arm has a bad ground you are saying split in the wire inside? Any idea how the ground is attached to the tone arm? Do you think a new wire set would potentially fix the issue? 

^^

@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.