tt surface noise reduce or tolerate?

I have found several things are important to significantly reduce LP surface noise:

1) make the cartridge track. The tone arm, the cartridge, the setup, the platter pad and proper grounding all play vital roles.

2) a quality phono preamp with zero feedback. I have found that phono sections that employ feedback will also exacerbate ticks and pops. Tube preamps that employ feedback may be more noisy than transistor preamps, but they will make less ticks and pops. Tube preamps without loop feedback will make the least.

The items of number one are things that can cause the cartridge to momentarily mistrack if not attended to. Mistracking can be the difference between a record seeming to be somewhat worn, when it is not, or a record seeming to be noisy when in fact it is quiet, were it simply played back competently.

The item of number two if not attended to will be an added layer of crackle. This is due to the propagation delay present in the phono circuits, being exacerbated by the loop feedback. Small ticks and pops that may well have been masked will suddenly be displayed in relief.

Once these things are taken care of, and as long as the LPs are in good reasonable condition, ticks and pops will be far less prominent- you may find that your friends are assuming that you are playing CDs when its really an LP playing.

I am one of those who say that vinyl can be almost as quiet as CD, however, and this is crucial....you must reread Plato's advice above. I have a Benz also, and indeed it is quiet - nearly no hiss on the vast majority of LP's. When the occasion pop, scratch, etc. sounds, it is on a different plane than the music. The music extends deep beyond the wall where the speakers are, and the clicks, pops, etc. are in front of the speakers. It is easy to disregard those sounds.

I will work on the suggestions above thanks....

I will note however that the dartzeel preamp has no feedback so the issue is not the preamp.

the lp that I was suprised to hear surface noise was a brand new lp from radiohead "in rainbows" So the issue is not cleaning the lp either.

I will try working on the tonearm/stylus suggestions to improve the situation.

Has anyone heard the above lp without any surface noise? there is a version that is double lp and plays at 45 rpm but I have the more common version which is just ol 33 lp.

Plato, Atmasphere and Stringreen are right. If you do things properly, which needs experience and patience and quite a bit of dough alas, vinyl reproduction can be so quiet that Tvad would be quite surprised. Perfect setup, a well designed TT and properly cleaned LPs are essential. The importance of a quality phono preamp is often underestimated. I run a Benz and a Souchy, have highly sensitive plasma speakers next to my stators and am never bothered by hiss and it is exactly as Stingreen points out, if there is an occasional scratch on the lp, it is heard on another plane apart from the music and as Atmasphere so rightly says, often my friends think I'm playing digital and are wondering why suddenly the music has so much bloom.
By the way, I do not wish to enter or fuel the digital-analog debate here. With certain kinds of music, I find digital preferable to vinyl, but only if treated with the same care to detail and not as plug and play.

06-23-08: Detlof
...vinyl reproduction can be so quiet that Tvad would be quite surprised.

I'm certain this is true. However, I maintain that the simple physical contact of a polished and sharpened gemstone on a vinyl surface makes it impossible for LP playback to be free of surface noise.

I'm also not interested in the vinyl versus digital debate.

Readers should also be aware that the OP has budgetary considerations mentioned in another thread, and unless he has changed is budget from one allowing the purchase of an unmodified Technics SL1200 and a stretch to purchase a Benz Micro Ace cartridge, then the discussion as it pertains to the OP may be moot.