Garrard GT35 TT

Jhayman

I picked up one of these in my travels, these have no rca's or ground attached to them, you can use your own cables.
So I hooked up my Nordost Flatline Magic 1's IC and made my own ground using a old piece of speaker wire that I split into 2 pieces using one as the ground and turned it on, there is a good hum going on, louder if I remove the ground and or if the touch the ICs.
I know turntables have a capacitance limit but I'm thinking either its the ground or he Magic ones.
Is it safe to use component cable as ICs on a TT?
The cables are the copper looking ones.
Damn stupid Apple products I thought if you take a picture on your iPhone it goes on your iPad in your photo stream pics?
Do I need a bigger ground?

mhardy6647

yup, the only issue with a plain vanilla shielded cable is capacitance; if the cable is long and/or of high capacitance, there will be more or less significant high frequency roll off.

The hum may be a poor connection somewhere; another good thing to try on a component that old (it's a fairly cheezy tt, by the way) is to reverse the orientation of its (nonpolarized) mains plug in the outlet; one orientation may give less hum than another.

Jhayman

Thanks MRH, I have it plugged into the back of my CR-2020 it has 2 phono inputs and I have my Pioneer TT on the other input, I've switched them to see if it was the input but its not.
I will check the plug, would component cables work as ICs , also is speaker wire good enough as a ground?
It maybe a Cheezy Table but I thought it looked ok..IMO

mhardy6647

It is OK but even of that series (towards the end for the "real" Garrard) it was mid-level at best as I recall.

Yes any coax "interconnect" is worth trying; plain ol' Radio Shack grade should be fine as long as it is short (1 meter or, preferably, less) if you don't have any low-capacitance cables.

Anything should be fine for a ground; a single conductor stripped from 18-ga zip cord should be superb. You can also try it sans ground to see if it is quieter; the quest for lowest hum is most often successful when all combinations and permutations are investigated :-)

Jhayman

Ok tried the reverse polarity no go, I found a set of regular in the box red and white rca's and they work perfectly, listening to sone vinyl now...
Your right mediocre at best, hollow sounding but has surprising amount of bass..
No hum at all now..
Thanks MRH..

mhardy6647

you'll get my bill ;-)

What cartridge does it have installed? How is the stylus and its suspension? Is the tracking force appropriate and how is the alignment? The "hollow sound" isn't likely the tt's fault.

Jhayman

I swapped head shell and cart from my Pioneer set the tracking to the same as Pioneer and not sure about the alignment but I'm not good at describing what I'm hearing, it's not really hollow it's I think more tinny not even sure if thats the right word, actually I think it just sounds more like more bass..
Which the Pioneer lacks..the needle on the Pioneer is a factory D-135 I think on the DL-112 table.
I does sound better than the Pioneer though, IMO