Need helps with hums, radio station in phono


My room seems to have all kinds of problem with some phono units. In the past, I had quite a bit of problem with getting radio station noise in some phono units but not others. The biggest problem seems to be in my Io Eclipse. I used to be able to fix it by connecting ground lead from tonearm to ground on SUT first (signal went straight to Io). Then last month or so radio station noise came back again and there is nothing much that help short of removing tubes from 3rd stage and reduced gain to 50 dB then use a SUT in the pathway. Sonically, I had not complain with using Dynavector 1:13 SUT although overall the gain is a tad on the high side. With Reed tonearm, I am still quite happy with the result.

Recently I installed Graham arm on my turntable and it gave a new hum problem. As soon as cartridge touch LP, I get quite a bit of a hum but no hum when the needle is lifted. I did not have this problem with Reed. I tried moving Io around as much as my shelf/cable/AC cords allowed. Playing with ferrite thing around cable, lift ground from AC, float ground on SUT, trying placing ERS paper around SUT, cables, Io, connecting ground cable from chassis to chassis of isolated transformer, nothing works. Everything I have is plugged into a power conditioner and Isoclean Isolated transformer. Sometimes the hum went away for a few days then it came back again. My Lamm phono has no such problem. I still really like Io Eclipse sound very much and definitely wants to keep it but I am at my wit's end.
I was told that Versa Dynamic used to make something that supposed to help with this problem but have not been able to locate any on Ebay or a'gon.
suteetat

Showing 5 responses by suteetat

I only have ground from tone arm to Sut. I played around a bit with ground wire from motor unit and plinth to isolated transformer ground that did not do anything. I use tw black Knight Battery power/speed controller on my Raven AC 1 turntable. I tried both with ground lead connected and disconnected between Sut and Io. Tw and Io is plugged into the same conditioner that went to the same isolated transformer. I am not sure it this is a ground loop problem as groundloopmproblem that I saw in the past tend to be there all the time even when music is not playing. In this case, I only get the hum if the needle is playing.
Tbromgard, I tried it only with phono cable as I use Stealth Dream AC cord on my phono unit, not sure where I would find ferrite ring that big!.

Jmcgrogan2, hmmm... thanks about ground between phono adn bearing hub. I never tried that before and will talk with TW as I am not sure how to connect that. My VPI table does have that but I never had to use it before.
Thanks for all the advise. I live in an apartment building so creating separate ground for my audio outlet is not possible although several of my friends who live in a house has separate ground rods placed specifically for their audio system. There is no ground switch on my preamp/phono unfortunately but there is a ground/float switch on my T100 SUT. Sometimes floating ground on SUT seems to help but sometimes not.
I talked to TW acustic and there is no provision to connect ground wire to bearing hub and they think that my problem is unlikely to be solved by doing that anyhow!
Hmmm... as soon as I posted the message, the hum went away. May be I should complain more often :)

Some equipments do like grounding, even more so than just with 3 prongs AC cord. My Lamm pre/power/phono has extra ground posts on the chassis and I found that background noise is reduced quite a bit more by connecting those ground post to my isolation transformer as well.
Yes I use pre amp version of dream AC power cord on my phono and pre amp. Also the proper version for power, digital and conditioner so I have a variety of multi color garden hose everywhere :)
I don't know if it is the star ground or whatever but when I auditioned Stealth power cord in my system, I tried only one initially and was not overly impressed. It was not bad but not really better than what I had. Only when my local dealer gave me two more AC cords to tried in my system then it really was a different story. So, the more the better it seems with Stealth AC cords.