tt surface noise reduce or tolerate?

I am one of those who say that vinyl can be almost as quiet as CD, however, and this is crucial....you must reread Plato's advice above. I have a Benz also, and indeed it is quiet - nearly no hiss on the vast majority of LP's. When the occasion pop, scratch, etc. sounds, it is on a different plane than the music. The music extends deep beyond the wall where the speakers are, and the clicks, pops, etc. are in front of the speakers. It is easy to disregard those sounds.

I will work on the suggestions above thanks....

I will note however that the dartzeel preamp has no feedback so the issue is not the preamp.

the lp that I was suprised to hear surface noise was a brand new lp from radiohead "in rainbows" So the issue is not cleaning the lp either.

I will try working on the tonearm/stylus suggestions to improve the situation.

Has anyone heard the above lp without any surface noise? there is a version that is double lp and plays at 45 rpm but I have the more common version which is just ol 33 lp.

Plato, Atmasphere and Stringreen are right. If you do things properly, which needs experience and patience and quite a bit of dough alas, vinyl reproduction can be so quiet that Tvad would be quite surprised. Perfect setup, a well designed TT and properly cleaned LPs are essential. The importance of a quality phono preamp is often underestimated. I run a Benz and a Souchy, have highly sensitive plasma speakers next to my stators and am never bothered by hiss and it is exactly as Stingreen points out, if there is an occasional scratch on the lp, it is heard on another plane apart from the music and as Atmasphere so rightly says, often my friends think I'm playing digital and are wondering why suddenly the music has so much bloom.
By the way, I do not wish to enter or fuel the digital-analog debate here. With certain kinds of music, I find digital preferable to vinyl, but only if treated with the same care to detail and not as plug and play.

Well, I haven't picked up a Radiohead LP for a while so maybe I'll check this one out. It is possible that it is just poor quality vinyl. But then, there needs to be a reason to get people to shell out for the 180/45 double lp. ;-)

Some will argue otherwise, but I do clean new records. Better safe than sorry to my mind. Anyway, I would think that the surface noise should be no greater than tape hiss. If that means anything to you.