surface noise reduction

After checking all settings and they are correct, I inspected for tonearm angle and tracking weight, which was only a little off, I finally checked the azimuth carefully.  What I found was it too was setup correctly, BUT, a fabric fiber was stuck on the side of the stylus! My bad, since I do not let anyone else touch it.  Problem solved, plays well now.  Still thinking about the Audio Technica microline cart......It's what we do.

Yeah it doesn't take much dirt on the stylus to make things noisy. I've had that happen to me also.  

I've also noticed that on at least a couple of pieces of modern music they are adding surface static noise as a production method.  Adds to the ambience or something. 

The other vexing thing about vinyl is that as the cartridge and system gets better and more revealing more of the imperfections of the vinyl process is revealed.  But I do think that stylus shapes like the shibata can bypass a lot of surface junk that simple shapes will run over.

Before spending on a different cart, try cleaning your record. There are several good cleaning systems that you can use on your turntable without spending of a cleaning machine. DiscDoctor makes such a product.

Second, clean your stylus. That’s easy and inexpensive. (See Soundsmith site for instructions.)

Since you’re using a MM cartridge, I can’t make any suggestions in that area except to consider acquiring a phono stage that can handle BOTH MM and MC cartridges to give you more flexibility in cartridge selection.

I do not know how that little piece of thread got stuck to the stylus.  I do clean the stylus with that little brush in a bottle, the thread didn't come off with that.  So I pulled on it and it came off cleanly.  Records sound like they should now.

Check out the new Schiit Skoll phono pre amp. Someone did a comparison of the Mani 2 vs the Skoll and posted some vinyl rips over on the schiit section of head-fi.org and the skoll had significantly lower surface noise.