Love / Hate relationship with vinyl?

To all:
I'm beginning to think that because I'm hearing mostly hiss, that it may be the tubes in my Audible Illusions L3 preamp. I bought the preamp new Christmas, 2012, and the tubes are still the original tubes. Going on 3 years now. Time to order some new ones (only two - 6922 variety).

I don't know how to fix the hum but having hum is completely unaccepatble. The system should be dead quiet when operating optimally.

Louis, my TT is a hot rodded Classic "2.5." IOW, It's a standard Classic, but with a (i) Classic 3 stainless steal wand and tone arm base, and a (ii) Classic 3 motor (300rpm). That's it. I have no hum problems. And, as an fyi, I didn't have a hum with the stock motor (60 rpm) either. Doubtful that the hum is coming from the Classic motor.

And yes, old tubes can act out by becoming noisy and hissy. Freshen up your tubes, especially in you phono pre and linestage.

Some of our other members might have some good suggestions about the hum. In the meantime, freshen up the tubes and report back.

Cheers,

BIF

Tubes per se don't hum (in the electrical sense of the word, which refers to 60Hz noise created by a ground problem); they just fade away like old soldiers. However, tubes can be microphonic, wherein they will pick up any environmental vibrations and amplify them through the speakers. But it is not clear what you are hearing that irritates; can you amplify on your definition of "hum"? Is it really 60Hz or is it more like a "buzz" composed of mixed frequencies? "Hiss" might (just might) be treatable by changing VTA. Try lowering the tonearm pivot wrt the LP surface. And so far as I can tell, you have not mentioned what phono stage/linestage you are using, except I gather it is tube type.

It's nature of high gain stages to handle LOMC.