So her I am doing some serious listening today after yesterdays making all those comparisons and retracing my steps. Serious listening, more like relaxing and enjoying the music, Hazel sitting with me, recovering from her spine surgery last Monday. There is no doubt unplugging and reconnecting all the various cables has had a positive affect. Its been a few months since I last did it. The biggest and obvious plus was unplugging the din type speaker cable connectors on the back of my PMC LB1 studio monitor speakers . . . own up, not done them for a long time. Costs nothing, give it a try . . .
OK here we are enjoying Paul Simon's vinyl 'Graceland', I became aware of an underlying hum, things did not sound right at all. Pushed, pocked and pulled, re made connections. Its got to be the tone arm earth? . . . nothing changed, then I 'wiggled' . . . no not me personally, the earth connector to the independent phone stage. Crackle, pop, I looked at the solder joint to the plug, looked OK, a further wiggle confirmed I had found a dry joint on the earth lead male plug. Obviously my work yesterday had broken its tenuous connection, soon fixed.
All is well now, I think things sound even better . . . ? Has this poor connection been the source of a problem for a long time, blaming issues on the valves, it certainly has not revealed its self until recently, I had put it down to valves beginning to go down? Today was the loudest I have heard the hum.
Ho-hum, what I'm not doing, is go through all that back tracking again. My assessment of the Croft stands as I listened to it with CD, BBC Radio 4 and Spotify, sounded great, and it did not hum when using the TT either. Stands to reason the unplug, reconnect terminal cleaning will have a similar positive effect on either amp.
So at the risk of telling 'Grandma how to suck eggs', re make interconnect, power and speaker cable connections regularly.
CJSF
OK here we are enjoying Paul Simon's vinyl 'Graceland', I became aware of an underlying hum, things did not sound right at all. Pushed, pocked and pulled, re made connections. Its got to be the tone arm earth? . . . nothing changed, then I 'wiggled' . . . no not me personally, the earth connector to the independent phone stage. Crackle, pop, I looked at the solder joint to the plug, looked OK, a further wiggle confirmed I had found a dry joint on the earth lead male plug. Obviously my work yesterday had broken its tenuous connection, soon fixed.
All is well now, I think things sound even better . . . ? Has this poor connection been the source of a problem for a long time, blaming issues on the valves, it certainly has not revealed its self until recently, I had put it down to valves beginning to go down? Today was the loudest I have heard the hum.
Ho-hum, what I'm not doing, is go through all that back tracking again. My assessment of the Croft stands as I listened to it with CD, BBC Radio 4 and Spotify, sounded great, and it did not hum when using the TT either. Stands to reason the unplug, reconnect terminal cleaning will have a similar positive effect on either amp.
So at the risk of telling 'Grandma how to suck eggs', re make interconnect, power and speaker cable connections regularly.
CJSF
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