Help....local radio station coming through my phonotstage!

I actually had this happen with a Bellari VP-130 that I purchased for my StepDad for Christmas. Great little phono stage, makes everything sound just like honey on steak, but the doggone thing kept picking up local radio signals. I discovered that where you place the unit makes a big difference, but there were limits as the design itself (unshielded vacuum tubes) was to blame.

 

Which would all come back to the tubes in the Rogue.

@mike catucci do you have any spare tubes to try?

 

Preamp tube.

 

UPDATE:

Last night was a bad night. I was at the end of my rope with this radio sh!t. Today is a new day. Here's what we know for sure:

1. This was not an issue with my old gear so something with the new gear introduced this. Remember I heard this station early on but thought it was my son/wife, not my gear.
2. Hooking up a 2nd player produced the same results.
3. The station appears with all 3 stages. (Sutherland, BCSEII, Decade)

Ok so I just tried using the MM input versus the MC input. Now remember on the Decade there is only one input, you switch between MM and MC using the switch on the front. As soon as I put it in MM mode the speakers were DEAD SILENT. So I put it back in MC mode but lowered the gain but the station is still there. So it appears that MC mode is the issue. So would returning the Ania cartridge and perhaps getting the Ort Black solve this problem for me finally?

 

This did it!!!! I tied them in a loose knot and plugged them back in. I can tell the station is still there but you cannot hear it. There is no way to tell if a song is playing or what the song is. THANK YOU!!!

Now the question....how do I fix this without leaving them tied in a knot.....do I swap out the cart for an MM or do I get the Planar 6 (which is brand new!) re cabled or perhaps something else?

Is there something I would be missing by going back to an MM after trying the Ania MC cartridge? I had an Ort Blue for 3 years and loved it.

 

Don't take this as advise, but, rather, sharing of experience. I had my LOMC Denon 103 cart running into 65 dB of gain on a Pro-Ject phono stage. It had a certain amount of hum, which I obviously didn't like. I purchase a Hagerman Labs Piccolo2 head amp, and now have the 103 plugged into it, with 26 dB of gain, and from there into the MM input on the phono pre, with 40 dB gain. The combined gain is 66 dB - 1 more than the 65 of the pre, but overall the rig is a lot quieter now, and that's with an active head amp.

If you get yourself a suitable SUT - a step up transformer, it is a passive stage, so it contributes no noise to the signal, period, while upping the voltage significantly. From the SUT you run it into the MM stage of your phono, and won't have to sacrifice your MC cart.

 

I don't think that it is your cables. They have too much shielding to pick up a very tiny amount of RF. the cables that connect cartridges are often more exposed and sometimes with no real insulation to shield them from RFI.

 

Glad you found something. Interestingly I mentioned up thread about my situation and using the ferrite cores, I did coil the chord in attaching it. So try just cooling it and using some Velcro straps to secure it

 

That'll be masking the symptom but I can understand why you'd be happy with that given what you went through.

Having said that, if an MC cart can still operate (almost) perfectly but only with a coiled cord, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss MC carts entirely.

 

Yea this is where I'm torn. I've been trying to research why MC carts are better but there seems to be no definitive answer one way or the other. So I either deal with the loop for now or go back to MM. I think it is safe to assume the station was always there but I did not pick it up using the MM cart and stage.

 

Technically, I think you’re right and I agree. But I can also note that all systems pick up RF of one sort or another. The only thing that matters is audibility. With sensitive enough instrumentation, it’s possible to measure RFI in systems that any of us would declare to be utterly silent. Turn up a conventional volume control to the 3 o’clock position though, and some nasty things become audible on many, many normally silent systems. At normal listening volumes though, if RFI can only be measured somewhere south of -80 db at 1 meter, then for all intents and purposes it’s irrelevant and can’t be heard by a human and therefore doesn’t affect the quality of the sound the system is capable of producing.

If the OP’s setup problem was resolved by putting a coil or loose knot in his turntable phono cable, then that’s it. That the solution is somewhat inelegant is largely meaningless. It works!

We live is a seething swamp of transmissions - radio broadcasts, TV broadcasts, GPS, WiFi, wireless telecom, wireless CCTV, Bluetooth everywhere - whether we’re at home, in the car, at work, walking the dog, shopping, whatever. The only surprising thing is that audible RFI isn’t much more pervasive.

 

MC carts use a cantilever that carries a coil of wiring. MM carts use a cantilever that carries a pair of magnets. The MC coil is much lighter than a pair of magnets. For any given set of cantilever and stylus materials, the lighter coil let’s the cantilever and stylus react very slightly faster and with less deflection than the same cantilever and stylus materials carrying a magnet. As best I can estimate, the difference in physical responsiveness generally sounds better to the slight majority of audiophiles.

There are so many variables - cantilever material, stylus material, stylus shape, cartridge resonance, cartridge body material, cartridge body wiring design, magnet material, coil material, coil wire diameter, coil wire winding style, cantilever suspension material, cantilever suspension compliance - that plenty of audiophiles prefer an Ortofon 2M Black or a Clearaudio Maestro V2 over any number of MC cartridges that respectively cost the same amount of money and more. The opposite is true as well.

Moving coil cartridges that are mounted in non-metal arms are generally more susceptible to RFI than competing MM cartridges in the same arms. A typical aliminum arm tube can shield tonearm wiring all the way up to about 30Mhz. Not bad at all. Bring a carbon fiber arm or some other non-metallic arm material into the picture, and things can change for the worse. Then too, high frequency wireless phone networks operate way about 30Mhz so even metal arm tubes are ineffective at blocking that source of RFI and at block FM transmissions that are close to the frequency at which a particular MC cart/phono cable/phono preamp combination are most sensitive to such things. The wiring in an arm tube can act as an antenna, so the more carefully the wiring loom in the tube is designed to reject RFI, the better. That’s why so many Rega dealers have sent (and continue to send) some of their RB303 and RB330 tonearms to Origin Live for rewiring. Worse still for RFI, typical MC cartridges output very low voltage compared to typical MM cartridges. That means a lot more phono preamplification is needed (compared to MM) to bring the signal up to the level needed for input that an integrated amp or main preamp can effectively use. A lot more MC phono preamplification means that everything is preamplified including RFI in the audible range.

For that last bit alone, some audiophiles settle on one of the superb MM cartridges on the market and never look back.

 

It's a matter of taste but I remember reading somewhere that MC carts are superior by design in some ways. I'll leave it to those with more experience to explain it in more detail, though.

Some carts do have a HOMC variance, though... like my 20X2L which has a HOMC sibling, the 20X2H.

 

I've been searching for a good answer on the web and have found nothing that really satisfied my inquiry. Your response not only satisfies it, but hits it out of the ballpark. Thank you for taking the time to explain that so very well! MM is sounding better and better to me.

 

There are also MM cartridges that use signifcantly smaller magnets, resulting in a faster response, smaller deflection and lower voltage output.

Moving Iron (MI) cartridges lower the mass of the cantilever/stylus combination by attaching a short length of iron (or any one of a number of other ferrous alloys) to the end of the cantilever. A magnet positioned over top of the coils on either side provides the necessary magnetic flux to generate a current when the iron moves between the coils. Unfortunately, MI cartridges can also be somewhat more sensitive to RFI than MM cartridges in general.

Magnet technology has gradually increased flux density per volume of material over the past 40-50 years. The tiny magnets used in the best MM cartridges are getting within hailing distance (where mass is concerned) of the coils used in some of the best MC cartridges. So the response gap has narrowed between MM/MI and MC cartridges. For example, Soundsmith in the U.S. makes superb MI cartridges that very successfully compete with the best MC cartridges in the world.

For many audiophiles who are already running an Ortofon 2M Black or a Clearaudio Maestro V2 and using even really great electronics, the lack of a listening room quiet enough to hear some of the micro-dynamics and subtleties that fine MC cartridges can extract from a groove is the limiting factor. Some of them (with analog setups that are already wonderful) try a couple of good MC cartridges and wonder what the fuss is all about. Their MM analog setups are already so good that they basically hit the limit of the listening room. Maybe your room is better. Anyway, it’s just another consideration.

Materials science is the principle discipline that has helped narrow the gap (for many, if definitely not all audiophiles) between MM, MI and MC cartridges. Once you get to the highly competitive US$600-$700 price point, the ‘law’ of diminishing returns begins to gradually kick in for MM cartridges. Smaller chance of RFI too, in any given setup. Again though, poor arm wiring can rear its ugly face, and poorly designed phono preamps can cause problems because they lack effective filters, and poorly shielded phono cables and interconnects can even overwhelm some otherwise well-designed systems.

 

I used to live 3 blocks from the tower used by a couple of radio stations. i got C&W on my phone answering machine. Find out where the tower of The Hawk is, There may be almost nothing you can do if you're to close to the tower. You said you found one way to keep the noise down by positioning your phono stage, you may have to let the OCD go and use it the way it works. Sorry.

 

this is also a possibility if you feel up to it. Build your own Faraday Cage.

Building Your Own Faraday Cage / The ReadyBlog

 

At this point, a bit of voodoo may be called for. This is just not making any sense.

 

EMI and RFI rarely do. I feel for the OP... but at the same time, if tilting the phono preamp at a certain angle or turning it around so it awkwardly faces the wall instead fixes the issue, I'd simply run it like so from that point on. While I agree it wouldn't look nice, I'd just be happy at that point that that would take care of the issue... along with bunching up the cord as mentioned earlier.

 

Well, I think it's partly caused by the Rega grounding scheme, which uses the shield on one of the phono cables. RFI picked up at the turntable will cause unbalanced currents in the cable and preamp and induce noise, similar to a ground loop. The likely solution has been mentioned a couple times in this thread, inexpensive clamp-on ferrite beads on the phono cables to block the RFI path to the preamp, probably more effective than looping the cable or reorienting the cables and hardware ...



https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XVSQ1P...q9&pd_rd_r=4ZR4HDJS2AA6TWWXWBB4&pd_rd_w=VkACS

 

The aluminum foil cardboard box covering the TT is a Faraday Cage.

While it is not the audiophile thing to do. When I have cables that are too long, I coil them up and secure them with a tie-wrap. Works find and if there are any differences introduced into the sound, I can not hear them. So what?

Did you try playing with an extra ground wire and touching different parts of your TT.

I do think that it's worth a shot.

 

I wanted to provide an update/solution in case anyone has this problem in the future, they can see what worked for me. First:

I switched out cables, added tin foil, tried ferring clamps, etc, etc, etc and nothing worked. I then tried a tube stage and bingo! the FM station was gone. Silence. I then added 3 different solid state stages and all 3 were a magnet for the FM station. Put the tube stage back and again dead silence.

 

That is wonderful news! I'm really glad you were able to get it sorted out. Now you can start to enjoy your music.