Phono Preamp for Grado Low Output Sonata1

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.

Grado PH1 and Statement Sonata should be dead quiet. If there is hiss something is faulty or problem lies anywhere else.

Brgds

I had a 1.5 mV Sonata. The sound was spectacular running into a Wright WPP100C with 60 dB of gain. Unfortunately, Wright is no longer in business. Your .5 mV Sonata needs at least 56 dB of gain. The PH-1 has two settings on the bottom:

L 40 db
H 56 db

If you're using H and still hear hiss, then I recommend looking at a Jolida JD9. It has more than enough gain to address your problem with hiss. It also sounds much better than any other $300 phono stage I've heard. You can buy it direct from Jolida for $295.

PS Audio GCPH