My experience with a Pro-Ject Debut Carbon TT

I thought this thread was dominated by a vibration/hum/acrylic platter height discussion. I'm not concerned with what stereo magazines are saying about it. Instead, I am responding to the vibration discussion with my observations and experience with my table.

 

within a thread sometimes there are other conversations that come up...

give it a rest...

 

Are you annoyed that i posted an opinion that failed to support your original claim?

 

couldn't care less.....

actually...I dumped that piece of junk months ago...

 

FWIW i have a tiny bit of hum on mine but it's only noticable at high volumes. Have however encountered some that are pretty bad in the past, so it's likely a QC problem as much as any.

 

I’ve just recently reinstated and 8 year old Pro-ject SE II after making a turntable stand/unit.
http://www.project-audio.com/main.php?prod=debutse

I noticed a certain amount of hum, first thing was to replace the original RCA leads and make a new ground wire, this significantly reduced the hum to barely audible levels at high volume through headphones and only through the right channel.
The remaining hum was totally removed by removing a scart lead from a Panasonic tv in the same room.

The actual RCA cables (1 metre) would be considered a downgrade when priced compared with the originals from Pro-ject, but I now listen without hum.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/kenable-Phono-Plugs-Stereo-Audio/dp/B003PU2LWW

 

Mbe, I think you've hit on the hum problem on the noggin. My intermittent hum is related to a loose ground somewhere between the turntable and the preamp. I don't yet know if it is in the ground receptacle on the TT, the cable, or the receptacle on the preamp. I do know that jiggling the table causes the hum to come and go briefly. When the movement stops, so does the hum.

 

i have 2 project turntable.
one is debut/10 years old.
another is rpm9/7 years old.

both of them are good./
i change stylus for debut to ortofon om20.
it's has a natural sound ,i like it.

 

I think what amazes me is the lengths Project Carbon turntable owners will go through to try and repair, reduce or eliminate the buzz/hum these turntables produce. I kept mine two hours and then packed it up and sent it back when Project told me what to try and nothing worked. This YouTube video replicates exactly what happened to me, exactly, it's the exact hum I heard, the exact pitch, not your normal 60 cycle hum, more of a 120 Hz hum, higher pitch. Anyway, I wanted to put this video here once more for people to be able to click on and view. You will notice he simply starts the platter moving and the second he places the stylus on the lead in groove of the record, he immediately has the high pitched hum. I wish he had shown how the hum again takes center stage between tracks on the record, also on very quiet passages, and as the stylus tracks out at the end of the record, all places where the hum is center stage, LOUD!
I wish everyone luck who is willing to pay $300-$500 for one of these turntables, just to have to try 20 different internet fixes to try and reduce the hum, including one, where the man cuts the motor part out of the turntable with a saw. Here is the video again, and if your turntable does this, send it back and don't spend 5 more minutes trying to solve a problem that the manufacturer has made no effort to solve.

 

Ok, since I went to the trouble of posting the green carbon turntable with the hum, I wanted you to see the man that literally cut his Debut Carbon in pieces to stop the hum. This video blew my mind, again, what people will do to a $300-$500 turntable to attempt to solve the problem. With this fix, I thought he most certainly would have killed all the hum, but hey, no such luck, even after doing this unbelievable modification, the darn thing still hummed, so here was his fix, fasten your seat belts! I must give it to this man, what a heck of a beautiful job he did on engineering this table, really amazing, but it still hums, oh heck!

 

It's interesting - there was another video at the end of the green one you posted, featuring another green carbon, and the user solved the issue with better cables.

I wonder if it's a combination of things. I've not heard that hum in my nearly three years with the table but I have a feeling it's due to my setup differing from others that just bought the table:

Pro-Ject Debut Carbon->stock cables->Pro-Ject PhonoBox V USB->Pro-Ject SpeedBox

I also have very good measured power (according to my electrician who ran the dedicated line that my gear is plugged into.

None of this, by the way, should be needed to have a $400 table play without the hum demonstrated in that video. It should simply perform correctly on its own. I have to wonder if the simple cable swap would've saved that other guy the trouble of slicing and dicing his table into pieces. Seems everyone went down the rabbit hole of thinking it was the motor's isolation or lack thereof.

Bill

 

Hi Bill:

Let me just say this, when I ordered mine, I had already been informed on some of the fixes and I made sure Musician's Friend would still be my friend if I sent something back to them and all was good on that end. Like so many before me, I just could not believe any product out of the box hummed, I had to see for myself. I knew someone had said they solved the problem by taking the dust cover off, so I never even put mine on. I was told about removal of motor mount screws, tightening the screws, placing rubber grommets in and making the motor more suspended, and other fixes, including the cables which was one of the first things I heard. I never used their cables at all, but instead used a heavier grounding wire and very fine Audioquest interconnect cables, expensive ones (for test purposes) as the cables were almost as expensive as the darn turntable. So, with everything tried and the things I tried actually made my hum problems worse, I carefully packed up everything and back to the vendor the package went, after the Project folks said they would not let me swap mine for the newer (at the time) DC version. On the DC version, I actually thought the motor was reworked and it was a DC motor but I was wrong, the only changes were in the wall wart, the motor was still the same AC motor they had been using. I honestly do not know if anyone has reported the humming is still present in the DC version of the turntable and I would be interested to hear from people with that newer version. What was very interesting in my conversations with Project, the service person told me things to do to minimize the hum, but he would never admit it was an ongoing problem with the turntable, the sales manager would not admit it either, he would only say, send it back, they were not interested in helping me with a swap.

 

The U.S. rep told me to put it in a different room that the rest of my gear to relieve the feedback issues I was having...

I said "really, thats the best you have" guy didn't say anything more....They honestly don't care

 

I have the dc and I love it. It's lovely and quiet. The only slight issue is that sometimes the arm doesn't fully lower, it stops 1/2 a cm from the record! But there are no noises that shouldn't be there

 

Aside from the tonearm, why do you think TT's easily go into the $10,000.00 + range? It is because motors, platters, plinth and engineering to reduce noise, rumble etc, get real expensive. I like my VPI prime just fine, but I know I could do better and it would cost big $$$!

 

Wow! Sounds like you did give it a go with all of those possibilities. It really is a shame that the issue's so persistent as it's a great sounding table for the money when there isn't a hum.

 

I'm a whole lot more cynical than you, as I just don't understand any company dumping something on an unsuspecting public and never acknowledging anything, and to think none of these hundreds and hundreds of complaints made it to any audio publication, don't you find that unbelievable?

 

LiteJazz, didn't you already cover this ground on page 2 of this thread? You're repeating yourself.

 

I am sooooo with you on the VPI. I really wanted the Prime, but I just did not have the necessary room and I thought the Prime might be overkill for my Shure V-15 Type V-MR vintage cartridge, so I went with the Scout with 2" platter, anti-skate, built a desk sitting dust cover, had a 7/8" slab of marble polished and placed some Vibrapods under that and it does a beautiful job indeed, however, would still love to have the Prime. In my humble opinion, very few people "really" require more turntable than the Prime offers, it's just a killer!

 

I did, but I'm not sure I placed the links to the Youtube videos there, and those two videos will be very valuable to people who really don't know what to look for.
You see, I believe many people do NOT realize that their turntable is not suppose to hum just a little! I would guess that young people that have never owned a turntable before probably hear the hum and think, well, I suppose this old style audio probably made a little noise back in the day, so I posted again to put everything right where they could get to it.

 

It's like Gene Hackman searching for the bug in The Conversation

 

This is exactly what my Debut III does. Never noticed it before to this degree. But it's there now. Damn!

 

try putting the lid on and down... on mine the hum goes away completely, no other modification. but I am primarily headphoner... sorry speaker boys

 

I guess I've been lucky. I bought a Debut Carbon over 4 years ago, never heard any hum from it. I did a lot of research at the time and didn't find any negative reviews or comments. I just recently replaced the stylus ( sticking with the Otofon Red ) and picked up the acrylic platter ( and got a deal on the puck at the same time ). It sounds fantastic to my ears, and still not a trace of a hum. Maybe mine came from a time from before possible quality control issues? Not sure, but anyone that asks I tell them that I'm super happy with mine.

 

What a load of crap! Waste of money - why it hums when stylus touches the groove while not when you touch the arm baffles me. The lesson is buy a better TT.