Still cannot get rid of hum of my Cornet Octal....frustrated

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TChung

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I still cannot get rid of the hum with my Cornet Octal.  Although it is slight, but enough to drive me crazy.  The hum is there without the cartridge.  I even tried shorted the inputs and the hum was still there.  It is not caused by the turntable.

I grounded the Cornet chassis to the preamp chassis and the hum improved a little.  I have star grounded the filament components per JIm's "hum fix" instruction.  All RCA jacks are isolated and they are located only about 2" from the board.  I use nylon standoffs for the PCB.  I also installed the CCS addition.  I have kept the jumper wires from tubes to board as short as possible.  I stick to the exact original layout except that I have replaced all the five 47uF electrolys with paper in oil caps and I have to mount them off the PCB, on the chassis around the transformer.  I use triple shielded wires to connect these caps to the PCB in order to avoid picking up interference from the transformer.

Bobbi (RougeAngel), I saw you did a wonderful job with your Octal.  Does your unit have any hum since you reported a 2 mV ripple at the filment supply with the oscilloscope?  

I do not have an oscilloscope and would appreciate very much if anyone could give me suggestions as to detect the source and eliminate/reduce the hum.  

Best regard,
Tom

RogueAngel

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Still cannot get rid of hum of my Cornet Octal....frustrated
« Reply #1 on: 17 Feb 2004, 11:21 pm »
Tom,

I'll get back to you tonight or tomorrow. I too, chased what my partner refers to as an imaginary hum for weeks.  :roll:

I hopefully will have some difinitive info for you.

BTW, how long are the leads to your tube sockets?

Bobbi

TChung

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Still cannot get rid of hum of my Cornet Octal....frustrated
« Reply #2 on: 18 Feb 2004, 01:19 am »
Bobbi,

The hum is definitely not imaginary in my case.  The tube sockets sit right above the PCB at the original positions so the average length of the leads is about one & a half inches.

Thanks for taking the time looking into this.

Tom

RogueAngel

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Still cannot get rid of hum of my Cornet Octal....frustrated
« Reply #3 on: 18 Feb 2004, 04:01 am »
Tom,

My tube sockets are located a bit further from the original position than yours.

I started chasing the hum right after I fired it up the first time.  Biggest culprit was a ground wire that wasn't too well soldered.  :oops:  Fixing that helped but the hum was still there.

Since I'm using physically large cap's in the tube heater circuit, they had to be mounted of board. I replaced the wiring to these with shieled wire and tied back to a star ground.

Next I started replacing signal path wires, including those to the tube sockets, with shielded cable. All the shields are tied to a single point on the PCB. Again, an improvement, but that @%^%^@ hum was still there.  Hum at this point was audible with headphones turned up with no signal.

Then I found the final culprit, V3. The tube itself was the source. I replaced it and the hum was gone. Might have been a poor connection or crud on a clean looking pin. But it is gone.  :D  Put in a new V2 and V3 tonight and all remains good.

Make sure all your heater wire is tightly twisted, double check all your ground connections, and clean the pins on your tubes and/or try replacing them one at a time to see if tha makes any difference.  Hum might also be induced from your turntable. Try moving the Cornet and see if a change in orientation has any affect.

Good luck and have patience.
Bobbi

hagtech

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Still cannot get rid of hum of my Cornet Octal....frustrated
« Reply #4 on: 18 Feb 2004, 05:31 pm »
Tom,

Can you post a photo of your chassis?  Easier to discuss if we can see what you did.

jh :)