Is it possible to have vinyl nearly noise free?

Can you recommend some stand-alone phono stages that have the design features you describe? Don’t think I’m smart enough to figure that out for myself, but it would be interesting to give one a try. Thanks!

I know Nelson Pass makes a stable phono section; not sure if its a stand-alone product or not. IME a simple way to sort it out is to see if installing a "cartridge loading" (its really 'detuning') resistor makes the sound different. If not, then the phono section is probably stable.
FWIW Jonathan Carr and I had a nice conversation about this topic at Munich a few years ago. There was a nice thread on the What's Best forum about cartridge loading in which he was active (his moniker was JCarr) that goes into the 'cartridge loading' aspect of this issue in some depth. The advantage of not having to load the cartridge that he brought up with me was the simple fact that energy has to come from somewhere, so loading the cartridge with a low resistance was going to make the cantilever stiffer and less able to track higher frequencies. He and I have both written a lot about this topic; its pretty obvious that I simply have to post an article on our website that goes into it with more depth so I don't have to keep repeating myself.

mrdecibel

We were shown a video of a stylus tracking a record ( recorded microscopically, and blown up on a large screen ) ... we saw little pieces of the record vinyl being torn away from the record, as the stylus passed over.

I find this very difficult to believe, especially because I can’t recall any other reference to this video, ever. Recording a stylus in a groove is notoriously difficult, and would have been even more difficult in the pre-digital era. Also, other videos of a stylus tracking a groove don’t show this effect, such as this one here. (This video shows apparent damage after skipped grooves, btw, but that’s not normal operation for must of us.)

There’s no apparent damage shown in this animation, either, but this isn’t a real-world representation of a stylus in a groove.

Perhaps the most compelling evidence that this claim is fiction is examining an ultrasonic bath after cleaning a bunch of records. Many people have done this experiment, myself included. To make the test meaningful, I used several different colored LPs that I first subjected to multiple plays, followed by a lengthy cleaning. If there were any basis to the claim, bits of colored vinyl would have been found in the bath. But they weren’t.

I’m not accusing mrdecibel of intentionally misleading us, however. Perhaps he just had a nightmare.

Cleeds, we ( the audience ) could not believe it ourselves. This seminar is also where I learned to never play the same vinyl over and over again, if we wanted our records to last, and sound like new, for a longer period of ownership. Believe what you want, either way, I am good. And yes, it was similar to having a nightmare. YMMV. Enjoy ! MrD.

I've played some LPs 100s of times (well at lest 100-200) and they are close to or about the same sounding as when I purchased them for use on higher end equipment.  The quality of the vinyl is very important if the equipment is correctly aligned.  Poor quality vinyl will deteriorate rather quickly (some off-brand vinylite 50s  LPs appear to sound worse every play).  I try not to play an LP more than once in a 24 hour period so that the vinyl has time to cool and relax after playing (the heat in the groove is high during play).  

fleschler, you worded it better than I did in my post : not to play the same record over and over again, giving the vinyl time to relax, as that was spoken about at that seminar. It is possible in that video I spoke of, the vinyl, as you say, was poor, or the vinyl was one that had been played over and over again, within a short amount of time. I really don't know. As frightening as the close ups of ant armies, filmed and shown on the animal planet and the discovery channels.