Well I found out what was popping the needle out of the groove: the brand new recording is warped, slightly, in my opinion, but it doesn’t take much to cause it to come into contact with the tapered carbon-fiber arm of the MMF-5.3 tone arm. As the stylus approaches the half-way point you can hear the sound of the record lip scuffing the underside of the tone arm ever so slightly, but you only hear it two or three times before it manages to pop the stylus out of the groove, causing to replay the same track or worse.
The record plays flawlessly on my Numark PTT-1 fitted with a $36.00 conical cartridge which has played both sides of about 700 used 45 RPM records which I suspect were salvaged from 70’s era jukeboxes. What a bummer. I’m not sure if I can adjust the VTA on the Music Hall, if I can, I will.
As regards the acoustic interference (and possibly EMF interference), I’m not sure what to do. Both times that I have encountered the issue, it has occurred with my temporary setup. I’m thinking I need to follow the advice of Paul McGowan, and devote a full system to just analog reproduction. It’s a pity, because my preamp is entirely analog, and it has both moving magnet and moving coil phono inputs. The moving coil input includes step-up coils from Ortophon. However, it also has balanced inputs and outputs, and two of the balanced outputs are switchable (speaker 1 and speaker 2), which allows me to run the Rogue Stereo 100 off the mains to the Warfedales, while allowing me to use the MC-252’s to drive the Bowers & Wilkins. A configuration That I am currently in the process of implementing (I have to clean up, move some furniture, and allocate sufficient speaker wire).
I originally procured the dual MC-252s with the thought of driving some electrostatic speakers, which I anticipated would require 500 Watts minimum power for the application, per Roger Sanders. So maybe I’ll add electrostatics to the mix, I suspect the B&Ws will stay on the digital side, though.
Future plans (and ruminations) notwithstanding, I think I’ll take the Music Hall turntable and the ELAC phono stage out of my temporary setup, put the Freya back in service, and pull a power amp out of the heap. I have an old Pioneer integrated amp with a phono stage rated at 60 Watts as I recall which works OK for 45 RPM recordings, and a couple of RadioShack PA amplifiers rated at 125 Watts into 8 Ohms (bridgeable into 8 Ohms for 250 Watts), but they don’t have the greatest fidelity, although some claim they are adequate.
@audioguy85 I’m pretty sure the MMF-7x anti-skate is different than the MMF-5x. The only possible ‘adjustment’ I can see is loosening a Phillips-head screw at the base of the string elevation arm/eye-hole allowing one to swing the arm around and varying the angle that the swing tugs the tone arm outward from the center, or perhaps bending the arm itself. But, as I said, I paid a professional to make all the adjustments for me. Also, all my turntables are mounted on walls, and after checking, they’re both external walls, but the temporary setup has a door opening nearby. When I slam the door, the record skips.
@vinylandtubes I was referring to the Beatles record first issued in 1966 by Parlophone (the name appears on the record label) and currently re-issued by Gammaphone/EMI in England (their logo appears on the front cover). The recording was originally produced by George Martin (RIP). The buzz about this release, noted on a sticker attached to the plastic sealing the item on the shelf is that it was an ‘Anniversary Edition’ (or at least it says such on the Abbey Road’ album) remixed by Giles Martin and Sam Okell. Reportedly, they isolated the individual instruments and ‘re-mixed’ the whole album. Audioguy85 opined I would be better off getting an original used VG+ recording, but they didn’t have one that day at Cracker Barrel. I’ll keep my eye out for one though.