Live with A Hum vs. Buy An Outboard Phono Stage

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.

Have you tried physically moving the pre-amp with the phono stage around to see if the hum level changes with location?

If so, it is inductance hum from some nearby power transformer, possibly in power amp or other component(s) or other external source.

If you haven't already, try this first to determine if that is the problem. If so, switching to an external phono stage is not necessarily the solution. Addition shielding and/or relocation of components for better separation is.

The only moving of the preamp has been to move it to a separate shelf by itself (no discernible difference). When I connected different amp, they were about 3' apart. No difference then either.

This morning, I put a metal widow screen behind the stereo to act as a shield, hoping the noise was coming from that direction. It was a no go.

You may have a different problem yet this site provides some potentially useful shielding and measurement solutions.

http://www.lessemf.com/mag-shld.html