Tonearm Wire


Yesterday my Dad came over to do some swapping of cables and make the infamous "White Lightnings" to see the results.
He brought over Some Cardas Cross and Analysis Data cables {Analysis wins with the interconnects in my system} And we procedded to make the Speaker and RCA White Lightings.

What a fun day! {We found the Audioquest speaker cables I had been using still sound better than the White Lightnings, but the White Lightning interconnects were so good that we made RCA's for all of the needed equipment. Including the mind blowing Sony Playstation. This beat out my OPPO 980h by a landslide. The single biggest difference of the day!}

Anyways to my question!!

We decided to rip out the tonearm wire in my old Pioneer and replace it with the White Lightnings.......major hum!

So I know some of you have the answer in your head already and how novice we must be to think that we could do this......so tell me why?

Is it because its not shielded? [is there a way to make a cable shielded?}
Is it because its 16awg?

Anyone know of a cheap tweek for tonearm wire?

Thanks in advance!

db
photodusty
First off, my apologies. I was rushed and excited to put this up here.

A little background.

Pioneer 510-A Turntable. Shure M97X, standard S tonearm that came with it.
Cambridge 640 phono amp.
Music Hall 25.2 Amp
Aletha LS-500 Speakers.

For the tonearm wire.....I may be confused.....its not the tonearm wire....its the wire from the tonearm, then that leads to the RCA's.....sorry about my technology terms! Its 1 small piece of copper strand then wrapped around it is some tubing, then the shield of copper strands. We lead that to female rca connectors that we mounted on the back of the Pioneer.

I think I have confused my self!

It was a great learning experience for us both.

As for the Playstation, it is warming up nicely, but right away this unit sounded so good. It blew us away. All the reports of the Playstation being a top notch CD player were right. {At least with my solid state system}

I am going to bring it to my Dads later this month for a tube test. {he has Jolida and the like....very smooth and detailed} I'll give a report on that later.

I listened to Kind of Blue yesterday. I have heard that cd thousands of times, but yesterday it sounded like the band was right there in the room. Very very cool experience.

db

Ya' know. I like this kind of stuff but it would really help if you would fill in some of the missing information. Like what cartridge, what tonearm, what table, what is the rest of the system?

16 awg! For tonearm wire?!? Please fill in some information.
OK. So today we took it apart. Replaced with the old tonearm shielded wires and put in RCA outs to the back of the turntable.

No hum! But the RCA;s that connect it need to be shielded RCA's. The white lightnings produce hum.

So if your trying this at home....remember.....phono needs to be shielded.

Unless someone else knows a better way :-)

You dont know it but a huge thanks to everyone on this forum!

I have read through so many posts and used so much info.....

Thanks!

db