Weird hum from SL1200?

reg fenster

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Hi, my old Technics SL1200 mk2 has developed a weird intermittent hum/crackle/hiss type noise, it seems to switch on and off and more so the nearer I'm stood to the turntable, and always hissing/humming when I touch it, can I assume it is a bad earth?, it is earthed via the earth lead to the pre-amp and was fine until a few hours ago.
I do not really notice when tracks are playing, but when the track fades out you can certainly notice it then.
Is it time to get the old girl in for a proper service along with maybe a new phono stage and recap perhaps or do I need to investigate replace the old cartridge?

I hope we can shed some light on this, thanks is advance.
 
If you are planning a service anyway then perhaps look at doing that before replacing anything. Could be your cartridge is fine but the tone arm/headshell wiring is dodgy. You don't really want to be forking out on a new cartridge only to find you're stuck with the same problem. A careful poke around of the wires may improve or make things worse and perhaps indicate if the fault may be with them.
 
I've done some blind poking around and the TT is fine, the problem is elsewhere in my stack of separates, the DSP does not play nice with the EQ separate, fortunately they both have passthrough options which only effects the phono stage on the amp so have one on and the other off or vice versa has fixed the issue.

The 1200 will be off for some work within the next 6 months, full service and phono mod is on the cards, along with any other work it may require such as recapping, undecided on LED modifications at the moment but I'll make that call later on.

We're currently building an extension and that has truly become a bottomless pit financially due to material costs spiralling on a weekly basis, at the rate its going it will be around 30 to 40 percent over quotation which is a big hit into my toy fund pot but hey ho chin up and all that.
 

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