Rega P3 Hum

[SS904]

Been reading about this issue since I picked up a brand new Rega P3 with an Exact cartridge. It replaces a Project Essential 3 with Ortofon Blue. The hum was pretty loud with the P3. You could easily hear it between tracks and lead in / out areas. It was going to be fixed, or the table was going to go back. I never had an issue with the Project mounted in exactly the same spot in the same system. The Project motor is mounted rear left corner, so the cartridge never got close.

Tried grounding the left RCA shield as often suggested but that actually made things worse with a ground loop. Tone arm ground is good as well. I get less than 1 ohm from my power amp ground test point to the bare metal part of the tone arm where the weight mounts.

All of this is pretty well pointless anyway with my symptoms. I get the hum as the arm is moved toward the spindle with the motor off and unplugged. This is clearly induced magnetic field noise. No amount of grounding of RFI shielding will help.

Full discloser, my table is sitting on a shelf just above a Furman power conditioner... Lifting the table up 10 or more inches and it goes away. Moving the table and power conditioners to opposite ends of the rack, hum is gone. Pure placement situation in my case. Thing is, I like how my rack is laid out. Also since the table is new, I was not willing to pull it apart for modification. Simple fix was to go to Home Depot and buy three 12X24 inch steel project panels to experiment with them as EMI shields.

It worked. I stacked the three plates and a 12X24 ceramic floor tile, just to keep them pressed flat, with the table sitting on top. Noise is a good 80% gone. I could live with it like this, but will go at it some more. Likely two or three more panels.

Think about your symptoms. Grounding or RFI shielding with not cure EMI. It needs to be blocked with a ferrous material such as steel.

 

[DavidTT]

Not sure if mentioned upthread, but I bought a Hagerman Humbucker when I wanted to run a Grado Prestige cartridge on my Planar 6. The Grado hummed on the Planar 6, the hum getting stronger as the cartridge end of the arm moved in toward the spindle. The Humbucker is a shaped piece of metal (steel I presume) that sits on the plinth and is shaped to fit right up close to the motor spindle. With the platter on you cannot tell it's there. It brought the hum way down to the point that I only noticed it when I moved the stylus to the lead out grooves and listened carefully.

I think they cost $35 and I found it a simple and worthwhile way to listen happily to a Grado on the Rega.

 

[SS904]

Not sure if mentioned upthread, but I bought a Hagerman Humbucker when I wanted to run a Grado Prestige cartridge on my Planar 6. The Grado hummed on the Planar 6, the hum getting stronger as the cartridge end of the arm moved in toward the spindle. The Humbucker is a shaped piece of metal (steel I presume) that sits on the plinth and is shaped to fit right up close to the motor spindle. With the platter on you cannot tell it's there. It brought the hum way down to the point that I only noticed it when I moved the stylus to the lead out grooves and listened carefully.

I think they cost $35 and I found it a simple and worthwhile way to listen happily to a Grado on the Rega.

Saw those. Neat idea and it looks well done. That may have worked in my situation too, but it would have cured the symptom not the problem. In my case I believe the AC from the power conditioner was being induced into my motor windings. Think transformer coupling. Shielding the top as those do may have cleaned up my hum, but I'd still have the coupling between the power conditioner and motor. I'd much rather eliminate the coupling. Those humbuckers are better suited for hum caused by the running motor. I don't seem to have that problem on my table. The small amount of hum I have present after adding the steel is still with the motor off and unplugged. Will certainly revisit if I get hum only when the motor running.

 

[krautmaster]

Have you considered moving the power conditioner to another spot? From what I can see in your pic, you have the condition on a metal rack directly below your turntable. I use a Furman Elite 15DM power conditioner but have it on the floor a few feet away from my Rega P3 with Exact cartridge and have zero issues (also everything is sitting on 1.5" maple butcher block rack).

 

[Fishead]

That's very pretty Herr Krautmaster!

 

[krautmaster]

That's very pretty Herr Krautmaster!

Thanks, sounds better than it looks too!

 

[SS904]

Have you considered moving the power conditioner to another spot? From what I can see in your pic, you have the condition on a metal rack directly below your turntable. I use a Furman Elite 15DM power conditioner but have it on the floor a few feet away from my Rega P3 with Exact cartridge and have zero issues (also everything is sitting on 1.5" maple butcher block rack).

I did, and probably would have, had I not made some progress with the EMI shielding. I mentioned in my opening post that I like how it's currently set up. My goal is to be able to keep it that way. My Furman has the pull out LED lamps and I like that I can light up the amps with the room dark. It also has the BNC connector in the back for a goose neck light. One of these days I'll add that to light up the TT.

 

[SS904]

Picked up two more steel 12"X24" panels and added them to the stack. I also lowered the shelf with the power conditioner on it "one click". Perfect. Hum with the motor off is completely gone. Which is great, because now I can hear the hum with the motor running! Guess I'll order one of those humbuckers. The hum with the motor running is not bad though. I can really only hear it with the tone arm in the runout and very close to where the label generally starts. Don't notice it between tracks as all. Not in a rush to get the humbucker, but I'll get one for sure.

 

[Actionflash]

Hi troika.
I had this exact problem with my P3. The level of hum was unacceptably high, but earthing the tt to the phono stage didn’t change a thing. By the way, I did have a separate Rega phono stage but removed it when I read that the Rega Brio amp I was using had pretty much the same phono stage so I wasn’t going to gain anything by having the external one in the system. Anyway, what I did notice, by accident, was that the rca leads from the turntable were sitting very close to the turntable wall wart which was plugged into a power board along with the other components in my system. I was messing with the cables and inadvertently moved the rca leads away from the wall wart a little. Hey presto, the hum diminished. I moved the leads even further away, hum gone! Just to make sure, I moved the leads back towards the wall wart, hum got louder the closer they were to each other. It solved the hum for me, hope this helps for you.

 

[troika]

Updating this 2001 thread for anyone who finds it in a search and to close off with everyone who advised and tried to help while I was going through this.

I replaced the Rega Exact cart yesterday with a Nagaoka MP-200. That hum that I was chasing is gone...like gone gone. It was clearly the cart. I looked at the new Rega ND carts and read some great reviews, but because of this issue, went a different direction and am glad that I did.

Thanks to everyone for their help. I liked the way the Exact sounded and the hum was more of an annoyance than an issue, but it really was an unacceptable disappointment in a piece of equipment like this. I can't be sure that on some level the hum was interfering with the listening of music, but it seems logically that it must have been. I'm spinning records non-stop at background volumes to burn in the Nagaoka before I sit down for critical listening and opinion forming, but it sounds good. I don't think I'm giving anything up to the Rega cart it replaced and having this issue resolved immediately makes me happier with my system.

Thanks again to everyone who helped me when I posted this. The Exact was probably worth the pandemic-era discount installed and I got a lot of enjoyment out of listening with it, but I'm off of Rega carts on this table, probably forever. If I were to buy another Rega table, it would be without a cart unless I home demo'ed it enough to be 100% positive that there wasn't an issue like this hiding behind that beautiful sound.

 

[vinylkid58]

I replaced the Rega Exact cart yesterday with a Nagaoka MP-200. That hum that I was chasing is gone...like gone gone. It was clearly the cart. I looked at the new Rega ND carts and read some great reviews, but because of this issue, went a different direction and am glad that I did.

Based on a couple of recent threads, the hum issue hasn't gone away entirely with the new Rega cartridges.

jeff

 

[troika]

Based on a couple of recent threads, the hum issue hasn't gone away entirely with the new Rega cartridges.

jeff

I read that somewhere too, buried in all of the glowing reviews. Maybe it's not a big deal to everybody. I know that Grado carts have a reputation for hum to. As I said, I can't say for sure that it was interfering with my music listening, but it was loud enough and distracting enough in the cradle, that I would turn the volume all the way down or switch to a different input when I wasn't playing a record.

I just don't want that in my stereo setup. This turntable was a huge step up for me and I really enjoy listening to music with it. It is also extremely "unfiddly". Simple design and it works really well. This was the one issue that kept me from being completely happy with it and I'm happy to have it resolved.

 

[SS904]

I used my P3 with exact 2 for a long while and got used to the hum. I did do some mitigation, most notable was I installed the steel plate you can get that goes over the motor. It did actually reduce it, but did not eliminate. Felt the same. An annoyance.

Two weeks ago I jumped into the vintage TT world with Dual 1242. After servicing it and making some minor repairs I put it in to my system with a AT-VM95ML cartridge installed. Wow! I forgot how nice a dead silent TT can be... IF, and that's an if, the P3 makes its way back in to my system, it will not be with the exact 2. I am really loving the AT-VM95ML.

 

[krautmaster]

Rega makes great tonearms and HORRID cartridges (I replaced all three of my Exact 2s with AT-VM95ML/540ML/740ML carts). The 540 with a RigB body is the best of all: