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Old Sansui Amp started crackling. Help!

M

morganlee14

New Member
To make a long story short, I am not the most analogue savy person so any help that can be provided is much appreciated.

I inherited an old Sansui RZ5000 which I have a pair of speakers and a turntable hooked up to, never had any problems with it. I moved and reset everything up the other day and now it crackles and makes a static sound. This sound is continuous, comes from both channels (although it sounds louder from the right), and it gets louder as I turn up the volume. I had the amp running and accidentally bumped the phono input and the sound was hideously loud (like someone smacked a mic). Likewise when I moved the whole stand it sits on, I got a loud burst of static.

Another potential factor here is I got a new turntable (AT LP60 to a Pro-Ject Essential ii) and I'm not 100% sure here but I think the static sound is worse with the project than it was with the LP60 and the only difference there is that the project doesn't have a inbuilt preamp.

I'm pretty sure everything is hooked up. My dad took a look at it and thought the same. If anyone has any experience with a similar issue or can point me in the right direction it would be much appreciated.
 
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Let me ask a couple of basic questions:

Do you have the turntable connected to the phono inputs?
Are you confident that your speaker wires don't have any stray strands of wire that might touch the back panel of the unit?
If the turntable has a ground wire, is it connected to the ground connection on the receiver?
Do you get the noise only on phono, or on all functions (aux, radio, etc)?
 
spark1 said:
Let me ask a couple of basic questions:

Do you have the turntable connected to the phono inputs?
Are you confident that your speaker wires don't have any stray strands of wire that might touch the back panel of the unit?
If the turntable has a ground wire, is it connected to the ground connection on the receiver?
Do you get the noise only on phono, or on all functions (aux, radio, etc)?
Click to expand...

The turntable is definitely connected to the phono inputs, and I'm pretty confident there aren't any wires touching the back panel.
It did only just dawn on my to connect the ground wire to the connection on the receiver which has significantly reduced the noise, it's now not particularly audible over the sound of music, and not particularly present in the L channel. There is still a low level of crackling coming through the right channel and it still changes with the volume. I'm assuming its over all functions. It definitely is over the radio function... still seems to sound more prominent from phono though.
 
I suspect it has little to do with moving and resetting up.
The low hanging fruit in this. Make sure all connections clean and tight.
Next up, make sure controls are clean.
After that real troubleshooting starts.
Could be something as simple as a loose ground connection internally (which could be easy or a bear to find.)
After that I think you get into the deep woods.
I don't know if your unit has them but, there's a group of transistors that are known to go noisy over time (kind of where my educated guess would be but clearly its a guess)
I'd guess a decent tech with a scope would be required by this point.
I hope I'm wrong and its something simple. Good luck.
 
Rereading the OP
It certainly makes sense to pull cover and carefully inspect area around the phone input you bumped.
You may have cracked, loosened something in the area that might be an easy fix
 
Is the noise present even when there is not a music signal? Leave the input selector on phono, but with the turntable power turned off. Still hear it? What about with the input selector on Aux?

When checking, turn volume to zero, and balance full left, then gradually increase the volume. Do same process on right channel. Do these tests with Phono selected but turntable powered off, then repeat with it powered on (no record playing, though).

Then do same testing with Aux selected (nothing hooked up to Aux input).

Report your results.
 
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