Trying to reduce noise while listening to tube phono


Let me start by staying that I'm in love with how my system sounds right now. Hagerman Trumpet and Decca London Super Gold (paratrace stylus) is a ridiculously good combo. The only "but" is that if I raise the level to 3 o'clock on the preamp (Herron) I start to get tube hiss... or some hiss from somewhere. It used to be worse but then I got all new very low noise tubes and it improved a ton but I want to see if I reduce it some more. I'm wondering if the issue is the amount of gain on my preamp? Should I try another preamp with more gain and see if that solves the problem? On other inputs there's no hiss even at full volume so there's nothing technically wrong with preamp.
dhcod

Showing 4 responses by mijostyn

That's why. What is the reason to have unshielded tonearm leads?
The first tonearm I had was an ADC Pritchard. It came with the Thorens TD 124 that I bought use. It was a wood tonearm and the wire within the arm was unshielded. As the arm got closer to the motor the hum increased. This all disappeared after I put an SME on it. Unless there is something special about that wire I would consider rewiring the arm. If there is something special about it I would love to know what that is!
dhcod you did the right thing getting the low nose tubes. Assuming they are the lowest noise tubes you can get that is as good as it is going to get with that phono preamp. It is called tube rush. Your preamp is fine.
This is much different than a hum which can be caused by a lot of different things. I'm sure once you put the needle down you can't hear it.
As the background noise of vinyl greatly exceeds the noise of even noisy phono stages.