Love / Hate relationship with vinyl?

To All,
First thanks for all of your suggestions and comments. This morning, for comparison, after much aggravation, I decided to go back to where I started before this experiment with the Hagerman headamp. I totally removed the headamp from the system. I reconfigured the Acoustech phono preamp for MC input (61.5db of Gain, 220pF Capacitance, and I prefer the sound at 47k Resistance). Plugged the interconnect directly from the tt junction box directly in to the phono preamp (no headamp). Perfectly quiet, and certainly enough gain. The headamp did slightly improve some things (bass was a tad tighter, the top end had a bit more extension, and the stage was just a bit more open). However, these "slight improvements" were not worth the expense of the noise that was introduced by using the headamp. Again, thanks to everyone for your suggestions and guidance, but for now, I enjoy the system without use of the headamp! What a headache that was!

Mu metal oft solves many woes, even hum.

That's good news. I have been told that cable effects can also be stepped up w an SUT so it's not clear exactly how it contributed to the hum, but who cares! Enjoy.

Geoffkait...how do you apply mu metal? Do you wrap cables with it, or use it as a shield under, or around enclosures? Or, just how do you use it, how much do you need to work with?

Mu metal absorbs the magnetic field generated by transformers so wrapping the transformer is indicated.