Debuzzing a Wheaton TriPlanar problem

Why not give Tri of Triplanar a call 612-623-0922? I'm sure he can help you out. I have heard that he's not so good at the email (by his own admission).

Hey -thank you - I can picture that scenario quite easily. But it happened with two different phono stages, and everything that can be grounded, is. I'm now suspecting a 'short' in the cartridge.

thanks - I willcall. I assumed that no response to an email would mean no response by phone also. See my answer to Xiekitchen; his diagnosis may be right-on.

Can you tell whether the cartridge body itself is vibrating so as to feed back into the tonearm wand? That is the only mechanism I can think of for this strange phenomenon. If you ignore the problem and play an LP, what happens? Is there added hum coming out of the speakers in addition to directly from the tonearm? Have you tried changing cartridges? If the insulation on the tonearm leads has a defect such that one of them is in bare metal contact with the tonearm wand, I still don't see how that would cause the phenomenon you report. The odds are vanishingly small that there are TWO defects, one on each lead such that there would be a voltage delivered to the tonearm wand (maybe). But strange things do happen.

Sometimes grounding everything to everything is a bad idea. Try removing some of those ground wires. But on the other hand, your report is clearly out of the ordinary; as you know, 99% of the time grounding problems manifest themselves on the amplified audio signal only, not in the form of causing vibration of an inert metal part.

Thanks for your considered response. My former career was as systems software developer, and I appreciate your debugging skills. Occasionally (of course) there is feedback while the stylus is tracking the groove. My gut reaction suspects some sort of intermittent feedback. as you suggested, from the cartridge itself. It is an AudioQuest 7000 now some 15 years old and my new Masseto preamp deserves something better anyway. I'd hate to think it's the shielding on the Cardas cable touching the tube, because that would require a re-wiring but that's what my hands-on experience feels like. Cartridge replacement first, then rewiring. The multiple groundings were done to successfully eliminate a constant hum at table installation time.