Live with A Hum vs. Buy An Outboard Phono Stage

What kind of pre-amp are you using? If it has tubes in the phono stage you could be getting hum from them. I'm not sure I understand what you mean by shorted interconnects - are you saying that you in essence shorted the phono inputs by using IC's and the noise went away? Or are you saying that you connected the TT IC's to a line input and there was no hum. How did you short the IC's - I've never seen female shorting plugs. Interesting, anyway........

Newbee -- Here's his original thread:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?htech&1233446646

His preamp is a NAD 1155, which I assume is solid state.

I think he shorted the phono inputs by connecting interconnect cables to them, and at the other end of the cables putting a piece of foil between the center pin and the ground of the male rca. The hum was not present when he did that.

Regards,
-- Al

Newbee,

I shorted the ICs by jamming a piece of tinfoil into a cheapo pair of ICs (very high tech), and then putting that IC into the phono inputs of the preamp, which is a NAD 1155, which is solid state. I'd like to go tubes, but I can't afford it, and I'd need a divorce first.

This may be important in isolating the buzzing noise. Then again, maybe not. I just powered off the B & K amp, and put a pair of headphones into the preamp. There was still a buzz present. That means that the amp isn't the source.

It gets weirder, and weirder. BTW, this morning, I powered off my wireless router, and DSL modem in the slim hope that they were the cause. As expected, they weren't.

Well I see I came late to your 'party'.

At the end of your other post you seemed to have solved your problem which you traced to an interaction between the amp and the pre-amp. -You referred to RF if I recall - I've a very short memory :-).

Going back to my original post - you seem to have seperated your amp and pre-amp in a quest to correct your problem. To what extreme have you taken this? When possible and necessary I try to keep the amp and phonostage (of what ever kind) at least 6ft apart. A couple of my pre-amps with phono stages come with seperate power supplies with long cords to allow a distant seperation to avoid hums - and it makes a difference believe me. Long winded way of saying, get some 6ft long IC's (cheap variety will do) and put your amp as far away from the pre-amp as possible. BTW, I don't think you are dealing with stray RF from anything, I think you are dealing with magnetic fields - I think.

May not work but gives you something to do! :-)

When I separated the amp and preamp (twice now), they are currently separated by a shelf, and a CD player. They used to be right on top of one another. The 1st time was when I tried to eliminate the amp by connecting my old Carver M-500T. It buzzed like crazy when I did that (3' apart).

Each thing I do requires extraordinary effort. About 5 years ago, I had a massive stroke. The doctors didn't even think I'd make it through the night. Now, I'm chasing little, annoying buzzes. I may have lost a few brain cells, but they weren't audiophile related.