Thorens TD160 and Grado

[edwinh]

I have been getting my vinyl situation together. I have a TD160 that works reasonably well and I'm going to have it gone over. Before I do that, I want to figure out the optimum, although not too spendy, cartridge for it. I have a Grado Silver Mk. I and honestly, I love the sound I get, but there is the dreaded hum. The tech I spoke to says the hum can be mitigated with the addition of a ground wire, etc., but I don't see how that can fix the lack of shielding in the cartridge. If I can get rid of the hum, I'd gladly get an update Grado Prestige, but I'm skeptical that the hum can be improved.

So, are there ways to mitigate the hum and if not, what are some alternatives that will provide a similar sound character?

TIA
PS. The preamp is a Mac C33. Getting that fixed up prompted the attention to the TT.

 

[Hoytis]

Dreaded indeed. Sorry to hear that. The TD160/Grado combo is completely hit or miss, as far as I can figure out. No rhyme or reason to it, since all Grado carts are unshielded (I think). So I can't imagine upgrading to a Prestige will help. I used to run a Grado Black (with gold stylus) on my TD160 with absolutely no hum. So go figure. You might want to just try another brand cart to see what happens before having someone digging into the guts and rewiring/soldering, etc.

Currently I run a VAS Ebony 103 MC (essentially a customized DL103)...no hum.

 

[mythless]

If you like the Grado sound, Nagaoka might be a good fit.

 

[FONSguy]

Try flipping 2 prong TT power first. THEN try plugging the TT and Amp in same power strip. This fixed a preamp to power amp issue earlier this year for me. Even more different is to swap the leads on the cart.

 

[edwinh]

Well, I decided to do some experimenting and discovered that I was getting a fair amount of hum with the turntable in the off position, so it wasn't entirely the motor inducing hum. My first move was to use some DeOxit Red on the headshell pins into the tone arm, and that actually helped quite a bit. I think the next step, after applying DeOxit to some other strategic areas, will be to replace the wires and add an actual ground wire, making sure that the ground is going where it needs to go.

With the reduced hum, I'm going to go for the (Grado) Gold. It pairs well with the C33 and the rest of the rig.

 

[Ilikevinyl]

I have been getting my vinyl situation together. I have a TD160 that works reasonably well and I'm going to have it gone over. Before I do that, I want to figure out the optimum, although not too spendy, cartridge for it. I have a Grado Silver Mk. I and honestly, I love the sound I get, but there is the dreaded hum. The tech I spoke to says the hum can be mitigated with the addition of a ground wire, etc., but I don't see how that can fix the lack of shielding in the cartridge. If I can get rid of the hum, I'd gladly get an update Grado Prestige, but I'm skeptical that the hum can be improved.

So, are there ways to mitigate the hum and if not, what are some alternatives that will provide a similar sound character?

TIA
PS. The preamp is a Mac C33. Getting that fixed up prompted the attention to the TT.

Grado cartridges will hum on a turntable with an AC motor (Thorens). I have a Thorens TD-160 and have a Grado Opus3 mounted on a Jelco tonearm. Also was using a Grado Gold3. Both Grado cartridges hum on my TD-160. Hum doesn't really interfere with the music. You can hear it on low level music passages.

I also have a Nagaoka MP-200. I would say that cartridge falls in the middle of the Grado and Audio Technica VM series (540ML).

 

[tube-a-lou]

Try a Ortofon Red, when I had my Thorens It was a good match. It has a good
sound, no hum and it relatively inexpensive.

 

[doctor fuse]

I used to use a Grado Green (and later with 8MZ upgraded stylus) on my 160 and 145, and it didn't hum. I did have to plug the power cord in a certain way so the table itself hummed with the motor off (plugging in the reverse way had this low level hum while the motor was on - a worse situation).

 

[RickB]

Bypass the Gold and go straight to the Opus3, a much better cartridge overall.
I've had G1+, XTZ, Golds, Reds, Sonata, and Platinum Grados and the Opus3 is the best of all...I can only imagine what the newer Timber series perform like.