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Trying to reduce noise while listening to tube phono

Let me start by staying that I'm in love with how my system sounds right now. Hagerman Trumpet and Decca London Super Gold (paratrace stylus) is a ridiculously good combo. The only "but" is that if I raise the level to 3 o'clock on the preamp (Herron) I start to get tube hiss... or some hiss from somewhere. It used to be worse but then I got all new very low noise tubes and it improved a ton but I want to see if I reduce it some more. I'm wondering if the issue is the amount of gain on my preamp? Should I try another preamp with more gain and see if that solves the problem? On other inputs there's no hiss even at full volume so there's nothing technically wrong with preamp.
dhcod
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
dhcod you did the right thing getting the low nose tubes. Assuming they are the lowest noise tubes you can get that is as good as it is going to get with that phono preamp. It is called tube rush. Your preamp is fine.
This is much different than a hum which can be caused by a lot of different things. I'm sure once you put the needle down you can't hear it.
As the background noise of vinyl greatly exceeds the noise of even noisy phono stages.
dhcod OP
710 posts
 
That is what I thought too except as millercarbon pointed out, there's more too it. Until I got the phono leads into a better position, I didn't realize how much noise I was dealing with beyond tube rush. It sure sounded like tube rush but it wasn't.
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
The leads from the Tonearm or from the Phono amp to the preamp?
dhcod OP
710 posts
 
Tonearm leads. Mine are very fine non shielded cables that run from headshell to RCAs. I really should have realized this a while ago.
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
So we got lucky. And thanks to mijostyn learned something about tube rush as well. Glad I was able to help.
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