@frogman and others with HW-19. While "checking things out" the other day I noticed at very high volume levels I have a hum in both channels with my HW-19/ET II/VDH Black Beauty rig. The hum is volume sensitive. It is not present with the Garrard/Ortofon/Delos rig. I went through the grounding rituals and believe that the culprit is EMI and not a ground loop. I'm running only 1 foot of solid silver interconnect which has a cotton cover and no shielding. I tried substituting a 1 meter run of shielded Straightwire cable I wasn't using. This made the hum worse and when I reposition the longer interconnect the hum changes in intensity. Primarily because of this last symptom I believe the hum to be EMI.
The sound is a very low level hum but not a buzz typical to ground loop. It doesn't interfere with listening because at any reasonable volume level it is not audible more than a couple of feet from the speakers. As I know all audiophiles can understand, it is just an itch I cannot scratch.
Reading my ET II manual I see that the ET is supposed to have a ground wire with lug attached to the negative side of one RCA plug in the clear plastic phono box. It is soldered to the negative side of one of the RCA plugs. Mine does not have this ground wire. I have
tried, however, without success, running a ground wire from the RCA plug to my preamp..
Based on my preliminary conclusion that the hum is EMI, I have ordered a set of Grover Huffman Empress interconnects but they have yet to arrive. They are triple shielded and low capacitance. I've tried without success to locate the source of EMI by unplugging everything except my amp and preamp. Actually, the amp is too far away from the TT to be the culprit.
Wondering if you or others have any suggestions.
Thanks,
Harry