Problem with phono stage


Hello Fellow Audiogoners,

I need help with my Phono stage. It is Lehman Audio Black Cube from Germany.  It was recommended from Simao, a very respected Audiogon member who helped me a lot when I was building my stereo. It costs 450$ brand new which I bought used from this site. Michael Fremer considers it one of the best steals in phono stages. I get a little bit better detail and bass extension BUT it also much noisier. I can hear the pops and any other noises  on the records much more then with the phono stage of my Arcam FMJ 28 which turned out to be a surprisingly good one considering it is an integrated one.
I also switched the cables but the noise is still there.
Is this a common problem with added phono stages as opposed to integrated ones or something is wrong with my phono and needs to be checked.

All help will be greatly appreciated.
Emil


emilm
emilm, Yes, atmasphere is talking turntable to phono input. You also want to keep the cables as short as you can. 
Dear @emilm : Do it you a favor and forgeret about that IC cable capacitabnce for the moment.

First than all the Lehmann must be perfectly set up for the Nagaoka 5mv. MP-110 cartridge. Your phono stage comes with several alternatives for set up and for what I read in this thread you still are not an " expert " about.

So my advise is the same as other gentleman in this thread: put in direct contact with Lehmann explain it your system issues with that cartridge and follow his instructions. With out the rigth Lehmann set up with that cartridge all other advises here are useless and futile.

Don't waist your time or money in cables till you make the Lehmann advises. Only my opinion.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.
I thought capacitance for cables didn't matter with a MM Cartridge , only MC.
@vinylvin ,  @emilin
Actually it matters quite a lot!


With a high output MM cartridge the inductance tends to be rather high. This in tandem with the capacitance of the tone arm interconnect cable connecting into the phono preamp results in a resonant peak. If the cable capacitance is high (as is often the case with many regular audio cables) the peak will be forced down in frequency, and can easily be somewhere at the top of the audio band.

This will make the system brighter and more susceptible to ticks and pops which tend to have a high frequency nature.


The suggestions about checking loading and overall gain were good ones. But we now know that the gain is 41dB which is fine. With regards to loading though, the cable capacitance plays right into that. Take a look at this page:http://www.hagtech.com/loading.html
Play with the numbers in the calculator, including the default. The link I provided earlier for the tonearm/phono cable from Blue Jeans has about 12pf/foot; you can see by dropping in 36pf for a 3 foot run that the resonance is pushed up higher, outside of the audio band. So that is where you start; after that you work on whatever loading is needed.


It is also a good idea to contact Lehmann: I think you will find that they confirm everything I've said on this thread so far.



@emilm 

if you can't get in contact with lehmann in germany, the ortofon folks in upstate new york are the lehmann importer here in the usa, they have a very knowledgeable tech who can also assist you... he was very helpful to me in the past

presuming you are in the usa
How in the world are pops and tics not normal in vinyl playback? It's part of the medium as it is a contact sport so to speak. You will never eliminate them entirely so why fret about it. If your hearing this sort of thing on a pristine brand new record, then yes, a possible issue. However, play any used records and you will hear some pops. Tics, clicks, and some surface noise. I don't get it really, it comes with the territory. I personally am not bothered by this, as long as the music sounds good. Lastly, try cleaning the records that are a bit noisy on a real record cleaner, one with a vacuum or better yet an ultrasonic cleaning. What you are also hearing is possibly static electricity. Try a carbon fiber audioquest brush and/or a zerostat gun.