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Hum in one speaker?

Hi, ive been having this hum thats been comming out of my right magnapan speaker. Well first thing is that my whole system is on the right side of the room and the speaker is right next to the equipment but its been like this for years and I never had a hum before. This seems to happen when using the turntable but only with certain albums that have been recorded at a low levels causing me to turn up the pre amp past 12o clock. Recently I put my speakers on mye stands with magic sliders and I dont know if that may have caused an issue or mabey its a bad vaccume tube? I tried moving the speaker around the room didnt seem to do much but the hum seems at its worst at the best listening spot (go figure). Mabey its my cartridge? I dont know but right now my turntable is about 30 inches away from the speaker. The hum is not horrible but when the music gets quiet it can be annoying. I did swap the speakers and with the tweeters on the outside the hum seems to be worse not better.
barruch86
zd542
5,339 posts
 
Pull the speaker cables out of the binding posts on the speakers and change places. The speaker cable that used to go to the right speaker now goes to the left. And the same thing for the other one. Don't touch the other end of the cables that connect to the amp. Play some music and see if the problem moves to the other speaker, or stays where it is. If the hum still comes from the same speaker, that's where your problem is. Otherwise, its something else in the system. Do that first and then post back. The overall idea is to isolate each piece in the system, one at a time, so you can confirm if it is or isn't working properly. You just keep eliminating components until you come across the bad one.
lak's avatar
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lak
3,516 posts
 
+1 Zd542
polk432
1,116 posts
 
Try turning on the turntable, turn up the volume some and move the tonearm across the platter slowly. If you don't hear a hum at first but do when the tonearm is moved across the platter, relocate your ground wire. Best of luck.
mental
1,029 posts
 
Turn the entire system off, pull the inputs from preamp to the amp and turn it on. Hum? Prob with the amp.

Integrated? Pull all source interconnects and turn it on, Hum? Bad integrated amp. No hum, proceed with shutting it back down and plugging one source at a time and powering back up. No hum? Proceed to the next one, just make sure you're powered down when pulling reinstalling interconnects. Process of elimination looking for the problem.

Polk's tonearm may be the first option before mine.
barruch86 OP
28 posts
 
Hi thanks guys for your input! So far I eliminated about 98% of the hum! What I did first is I put the speakers back to tweeters on the inside. Then I Moved the amp and the turntable as far away from the preamp as I could. Then I played the same record that was causing the issue and it was much better!. I think I narrowed it down to the preamp because when the record is over I can still hear a slight hum so I tapped my finger on my arc sp8 preamp and I can hear a thumping hum noise when I tap then it goes away. Then when I take the needle off the record its back to dead silence. So mabey its a bad tube or just the transformers of the amps need some space or the turntable needs some space, but the fact that I got a positive result so far is encouraging.
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