How to Manage Rhea "Noise"


I have noticed excessive noise from my Rhea. The balanced out is noisier than the RCA out. Gain greater than 56db makes the noise completely unacceptable/clearly heard from my "sweet seat." This prevents use of ultra low output moving coils. Any suggestions. By the way my old PH-3 was dead quite. Go figure.
xagwell
The Rhea I had for loan some time ago had absolutely no problems. Very silent. The original tubes need some time to burn in.
But anyway, I would change them for NOS.
I reckon you'll have to go through the experimentation of trying different things to try to pinpoint what the cause is, and how then to eliminate it.

I'm hoping other Rhea owners will chime in, and give you better advice than I can, but probably the basic things like where the unit is placed in regards to your other equipment (EMI), or RFI interference may be a cause?

Is this noise a hum? A hiss?

The only other things that come to mind is ground loop issues, or that the Rhea you have is somehow sensitive to "dirty" AC Mains power?

Sorry that I can't offer much more help than these suggestions, and I do hope you get this problem resolved. Mark
Xagwell, see your other post for my response to your main question.

Funny, my experience with the ARC PH-3 was quite different from yours. (I was using a fairly low output MC cartridge, which might explain the different experience though.) It was noisy enough to push me upgrade from it, and the ARC LS-2 preamp I was using , to the Ayre K-1XE preamp, with the phono boards. Quite a leap forward in my opinion.
Thanks all. I will be talking with Mike at MS to help me through this as well. Hopefully the following will answer a few questions. It currently resides on its own shelf. Power cords do not traverse interconnects. Noise has a sea shore charaacter, and occurs whether plugged into an AC line conditioner or wall. Swapping tubes is not an option since the unit is being field tested.
I hate to say this. sell the rhea and get a phono stage that is not noisy.
LOMC's with the rhea produces tube noise. I have had the rhea in my system twice 3 years apart and both times I had tube noise.
BTW do you still have the high output benz. you should get no noise with that.