I'm having a strange and unbelievable persistent hum problem in my first vinyl setup. Help?

I would try the other direction just for giggles. Get a power strip and plug everything into it and plug it into the wall with a three to two wire adaptor just to foot the ground completely ind isolate it from the house ground. Wouldn't want to keep it like that but might aid in tracking it down.

 

The bellari is gone at this point actually. After receiving the replacement Debut Carbon, I figured it must be the Bellari and exchanged it for a Cambridge Azur 651P. So I have all new equipment, yet the problem is still persisting. I would find it strange if two completely different sets of TT/Pre ended up having the same bit of damage.

 

Afraid not.

 

Whoops, completely missed that paragraph, sorry. Yeah, I'm betting on an outlet/household ground loop then.

 

No worries. The weird thing about that is that I've tried almost everything with same outlets, different outlets, power strips, etc. with no change at all. Also the fact that everything was working for a bit and the hum/buzz appeared all at once makes me wonder how a household/outlet issue could come on so incredibly suddenly.

 

Oh also I've just checked my outlets with a little device called a "SnapIt" that plugs into the wall and indicates the state of the ground. All outlets are coming up as "Correct".

 

I remember there was a fellow on another forum who had a hum coming from his turntable that drove him nuts.
He also had a Bellari phono stage and was convinced it was the culprit. It turn out that he had a Decware amplifier
which emitted some sort of magnetic field and it was to close to the turntable. He move it further away…. Problem solved…
Could you have a problem similar to this??

 

Hm I don't have any amp for the system so there isn't one around. Just my pre into my powered speakers. I have tried moving the pre away, but it doesn't make a difference, nor did it with the Bellari

 

One of my powered monitors (mAudio BX5a) developed a static problem and I had to replace a cap in the amp in the speaker to fix.

 

Have you tried coupling the set up to a cd player(without the turntable connected?).....If all is well,you know where the problem lies.Do you have an alternative cartridge at hand?

 

Returning to see how you are making out. Did you ever check around the house to see if you have heaters or dimmers of any type on lamps or walls, etc running? Am I reading you correctly that you no longer have a receiver and are running only the table into a preamp and then into a pair of powered speakers? If that is the case, disconnect the speakers from the PC if they are connected so that you only have table/pre/speakers. If the hum is still present, use a 3 prong to 2 prong adapter on one of the speakers and see if that fixes it, then use one on the other speakers power cord as well if not. At that point, you should only have one ground point to the entire system. If it still hums, you either have overlooked some device connected in the home that is causing noise or you have magnetic radiation from some device being too close to another. That's pretty much everything unless one of the three connected products are defective.
-Bill

 

I was able to get rid of a hum in my turntable by unplugging a wall wart that was powering an unrelated piece of equipment.

 

I recently received a Pro-Ject Debut Carbon Esprit SB (DC) which had a problem with a low hum. I narrowed it down to the 15VDC power supply that came with the turntable. The hum was there even when the motor was not running. Have you tried completely removing the power supply while listening for the hum?

 

I'll have to try a these several overnight solutions over the course of today. However, one update I have is that I used different RCA's with a separate piece of speaker wire as ground and it reduced the hum a good amount but did leave a buzz that's still too loud to be acceptable.

 

You may have a couple of separate issues going on then. A hum and a buzz are often caused by different things. The hum may have been poor shielding on the cables which you may have solved with the swap. The buzz can be a less than ideal grounding scheme or another component injecting noise into the AC line.
-Bill

 

Well it looks like we have an answer. I took my TT down to Sound Advice and long story short both mine and another debut carbon had the same nasty hum through their nice expensive equipment. Looks like a TT issue all along. I'll be returning this one and probably staying away from ProJect after the whole ordeal. Any good recommendations for a ~400 TT?

 

Mine is quiet, but only after tossing the the cheap, noisy power supply.

 

Power supply doesn't make a difference for mine it seems. Whether the included one, the one at Sound Advice, or a different higher quality 15V DC from radio shack, the noise remains.

 

Get a Rega RP1. At that price point, nothing is perfect but the build is more robust on the Rega and it sounds decent.
-Bill

 

Had same issue with my old belt drive. As soon as I got a direct drive and moved speakers far away from TT, silence and just the music. Even the rumble that I had on my belt drive disappeared.

 

Not surprised.

Which Rega arm is on the RP-1? If it's the 101 or 202, I've seen quite a few of those with an unacceptable (imo) level of hum, too. I agree it beats the Pro-ject, but still has some issues, too. I guess it's a trade off in the sub-$500 range.

 

My debut carbon is silent but i have the speedbox S too

 

There is no noise issue inherent in any Rega arm or wire set. You may have some damaged goods. They are all built the same, so it doesn't make any sense that there are some with more noise than others. It is about the connection of the system or the condition of the product. The designs are fine.
-Bill

 

Perhaps the Moth 202 is different? I've found every single one to hum. Always rewire it. Always.

 

Researching a bit, I'm finding I really would like to have a Debut Carbon just without the hum obviously. I don't really get why the DC model is having this issue, so I don't know how it could be fixed. I've already gotten a replacement with no luck, so any ideas or advice?