In firing up my vintage Pioneer turntable I find that there is an unpleasant static/fuzz sound coming from the speakers. It is originating from one of the components, not the record itself.
The static occurs intermittently and seemingly randomly, and just touching my finger to the stylus can produce it.
My prime suspect is the cartridge, which is the original from the late 1970s. The receiver is newer, with no phono input, so the turntable is connected to a (cheap) pre-amp that I bought maybe ten years ago.
So my thoughts, in order, are:
Replace the cartridge
Replace the pre-amp
Replace the speaker wires (probably a longshot as to this being the issue)
Unlikely to be the cartridge.
Touching things tends to couple electrical interference to them from your body. When this happens it is often a symptom of poor grounding somewhere or an issue with continuity of ground.
A static/fuzz noise can be symptom of a number problems. It can arise from the system picking up radio frequency interference. Well designed systems should have adequate protection, but the modern world fills everywhere with RF energy, so it can be a problem.
But, if it were my system, I would start by ensuring that all the connections were good, and that there is a known good ground - something that can’t be taken for granted. Grounding issues and fixing them has been the biggest culprit in my experience of chasing such problems.
The question becomes - what grounds the rest of the system? A problem with some gear is that nothing is grounded. The goal is generally to have everything go to a common ground. This is often difficult. But if you turntable has a ground lead and it is just floating about - you potentially have a problem.
The manner in which the pre-amp is powered may matter. Whether it has mains power or a wall wart. Ground may come eventually via the interconnection lead from the main amp. Hopefully something has a real ground.
Possible. The rubber suspension in cartridges can fail. Depends what “really sucks” sounds like.
The cartridge should have a ground connection. Pull off all the wires, and clean the pins on the cartridge, then put all the connectors back on, making sure they are all snug. Twist a bit as you put them back on. There should also be a ground wire on the turntable. Make sure it’s connected to the ground connection on your preamp. Also, make sure all the phono connections (the worst connector ever invented) are making good contact.
OK, I have attached the phono ground wire to the pre-amp chassis and that seems to have corrected Problem One.
Now I have to figure how to make the music sound better. It is hard to explain, but I guess I would say that it sounds muffled - not clear or crisp - and maybe a bit crackly. It is not horrible, but it is just short of listenable.
There is a CD player attached to the system, I fired that up as well. The sound is extremely faint and static-y, much worse than the turntable. I was curious how that would sound. Anyway, I don’t have time to mess with it now, I will check back in when I do.
Cartridges go bad over time - the elastomers that hold the needle arm (cantilever) in place can degrade and become stiff and brittle.
What is the make and model of the cartridge?
I had a problem with my turntable though I don’t remember what it was, whether it was static noise or one of the channels being faint, but I fixed it by removing the cartridge and reinstalling it. Just as another thing to try. The current coming out of a magnetic cartridge as I’m sure you know is miniscule, so excellent electrical contact is crucial.
I don’t think it’s a ground-ground problem but an interconnection problem. In other words, they need to be properly connected to each other (in the way we call grounding for audiio) but not necessarily to earth. So don’t bother tracking down copper rods or water pipes.
Clean and burnish all of the contacts: cartridge, audio, even the speakers while you’re back there.
Bopping around on a few websites, I’ll recommend this how-to for cleaning connections:
Obviously, pick and choose how much you want to do and how far you want to go, but I like the recommendations for the gear you might consider using – neither difficult to obtain nor particularly expensive, and likely to keep you out of trouble that one could easily get into by inadvertently using the wrong products.
Wow, thanks @DavidNRockies. All these years and I didn’t even know that cleaning your connections was a thing. The article says to do it at least twice yearly.
It also suggests that improvement in sound quality will be quite noticeable. Let’s just say I’ll believe it when I hear it.
