tt surface noise reduce or tolerate?

The longevity of LPs is something I can't argue about. The very first LP I acquired, used, about 1954, the musical "Wonderful Town", I can still play today. In that time interval Mag Tape, which until CDs was the only alternative, has gone through several format changes rendering earlier formats unplayable.

I can't tell you how many "new" pressings I bought were very noisy. I thought I was getting all the crap and everyone else was getting the good stuff. Many times it's the pressing. Trying to lessen the effects is the trick. So many things control surface noise intensity. The preamp, the phonostage w/in the preamp. Certainly all the things others have mentioned.
I use a tube phono with my SS gear. Depending upon the tubes used I can make srfce noise better or worse. anything that accents the HF will generaly increase SN. Room acoustics is a BIG one as well.
Compared to others systems I have heard my SN was always exagerated. Now most of my SN issues are from the loud noises eminating from the LP sometimes singly or many in short time frame. I can't say that I get a continuous groove noise such as maybe you are describing. That would be red flag as a arm/cart/TT set up in my book. You may want to look at the cart loading as well.

noise floor has dropped a lot since got the heavy mat from kabusa, the tonearm dampen kit from kabusa, and had the cartridge professionally aligned including tonearm height set by eliot midwood from acoustic image in los angeles.

michael

Presuming that all equipment matching and tone-arm set-up issues have been resolved And you continue to have LP noise, what's the next step? Record cleaning. Specifically, steam cleaning has demostrated it is the single most cost-effective method to remove pressing compounds and other "stuff" from LPs. The deep steam cleaning post is long but well worth a read.

Audiofeil wrote:
Much of the new stuff is junk and almost all of it is overpriced

Couldn't agree more!! I just got into vinyl 3 months ago and 99% of my vinyls are new pressings priced between $30 to $50 a piece. And I spent 15 mins cleaning each side of the new LP with Audio Intelligent 3 step solutions. I found that most LPs from Speaker Corners are pure crap - one out of every two that I bought was noisy. I have a bunch of Classic Records release which was pretty bad too.

The labels that consistently deliver the quietest background noise is MusicMatter 45rpm reissues. I have some very nice LPs from Pure Audiophile records too. The Analogue Production 45rpm reissues ($50) have been huge disappointments - loud surface noise, scuff marks all over LPs.

I will stop buying any records from Speaker Corners and Classic Records from now onwards.