Love / Hate relationship with vinyl?

Another thing to consider is that SUTs are not as cartridge-specific as you may have thought.

The loading of the transformer with a given cartridge at the input *is* however.

If you get a Jensen SUT (which are some of the best made, price no object) then they will know exactly what the correct loading will be. In this way you will bypass noise and hum possibilities that are very likely affecting you situation by using an active stepup device.

I don't think your line stage tubes are a problem; if they were the hiss would be an issue on all functions. Its not how old the tubes are, its how much time on them that counts.

Bifwynne, I replaced the tubes in my preamp, and no more hiss. Still a low level hum, but very low. I'm still going to work on it, because I want it, as another A'goner said, "dead quite".

Lewm, I am hearing a low level 60hz, hum. The hiss now is gone, as I have replaced the two tubes in my Audible Illusions L3 preamp. My phono stage is a Acoustech PH-1P. The head amp is a Hagerman Piccolo. Oh, I respectfully disagree that someone would lower the VTA to treat a problem with hiss. Sure, it might lessen the hiss, but that also alters tonal balance. Anyway, the hiss was from the old tubes is now corrected.

Replying to Al.....
I do apologize to you, and to all who read my posts, as I haven't updated my system info here on A'gon for years. What is shown is out of date, and my current system is totally different now.
#1). So....in reply to your statement that I'm using "a multitude of different power conditioning products", well I'm not. All my gear is plugged in to one Running Springs Audio Jacob PC. That's about as simple as I can make it.
#2). I haven't played with a cheater plug yet, but I think that's a great idea to see if I can identify, and eliminate the hum.
#3). My cables are close to everything. When I move (or even touch) the cables going to my headamp, the level of hum changes. I really can't move the headamp too much, as the interconnects coming from my tonearm junction box to the headamp are 1 meter, and the interconnects coming from my headamp to my phono preamp are only one meter as well. All I can do for now is find the position where the headamp is the least susceptible to hum. I've been fairly successful, as, at all but insanely high volume levels, the hum can't be heard. It's only when the volume is way up, and the cartridge is not playing a record, do I hear the hum.
#4). I'm running the output of the headamp into the MM section of the the Acoustech phono, using 220pf. I do plan to reassess going directly into the phono stage without using the headamp.
Thanks for all the info!

Elinor...yes, I have the ground wire from the tt, connected to the phono preamp. I tried running it to the headamp, but that made the hum much worse.