Shorting Plugs and Non-shorting Plugs - Wothwhile?

Disconnecting the preamp, and temporarily relocating is the only thing I haven't tried.

I thought I had cured the problem, too, by leaving the preamp on, suggesting that the problem was thermal in nature. But no. One of the things that makes this problem so hard to solve, is that it's sporadic. It makes it very hard to find a hard fault that can be isolated. Every time I think I have it solved, it comes back. Maybe, if I have about 45 beers, I won't care...

If the pre-amp hums with nothing else plugged into it (except headphones), then you probably have a leaky capacitor in the power supply.

The only other thing I can think of is that you're equipment is right next to an extremely high level of EMI or RFI radiation.

This is easy to diagnose. Just set a portable AM radio next to the disconnected pre-amp and tune it off station to static. If the pre-amp and radio hum together it's not the pre-amp.

Now unplug everything from all your 120V electrical outlets and then plug in only the pre-amp and a clock radio into the same outlet. Tune the radio as above and listen for the hum. Both together means it's not the pre-amp. Just the pre-amp means it's the pre-amp.

Final final test, buy an emi/rfi filter at your local BB, Walmart, etc. Try it and see if the hum stops. If it does, keep it and call and see if you can find the cause of the interference. If it doesn't return it.

I guess it's the preamp. Just the preamp hummed using the radio test as described by Dan Myers. I like black and white tests like he describes. I can make a determination, and move on to my next step. Whatever that is. It just may be a new phono preamp, plugged into the (silent) tape inputs.

I had a serious hum problem in my system that turned out to be with my tuner and cd player. My pre-amp and tuner have two-prong plugs. My power amp has a three-prong grounded plug, so does my cd player.

I was be-fuddled about the hum because my tuner and pre-amp have different grounding schemes. Never-the-less, I floated the ground on the power-amp with a three to two prong plug adapter and now the nasty hum is gone. I had a ground-loop producing the nasty hum...

I hope this helps...

Oh, also, unless the cheap IC's that you spoke of are plastic garbage jobs that used to come with cassette decks, etc., you don't have to sacrifice them. Just get the cheap rca plugs from radio shack and solder the hot to ground. Viola, you have super cheap shorting plugs. Not any considerable amount of money invested, and they get the job done as well as any shorting plugs.