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Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ.

Try cleaning your RCA connections

I had a similar problem.

I suggest that you clean your RCA connections. I use Caig Pro Gold and a small brush to lightly dampen the gold plated surfaces, then wipe off the excess Pro Gold with "trimmed" Q-Tips. I trim Q-Tips by pulling most of the cotton away with pinched fingers so that just a little fuzz remains on the Q-tip shaft. This will then slip nicely between the inner and outer conductors of a male RCA (mine are Cardas). I also clean the outer (gold plated) conductor of the female RCAs with Pro Gold and Q-tips (no need to trim for these). This has abolished the intermittent hum I had been having for years.

In my case, I had hum only when my HT AVR was selected. I use my HT AVR only for HT, all other sources (hum free so far) go straight into my Aspen GK-1 preamp. When I had hum I would insert a Jensen IsoMax transformer into the line between HT AVR pre-out and preamp input (and the hum would go away). Sometime later (months, maybe a year or two) I would get hum WITH the IsoMax in place. Then, REMOVING the IsoMax caused the hum to go away. How can that be? I think the problem was dirty connections, which--when disturbed--would sound good for a while, but only for a while. For a long time I was too busy to really think about the problem. Then about two years I read a post here about cleaning RCAs and, after cleaning connections, have had no further hum problems.

Pete


Without telling a long, twisty, pointless story,


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  • Try cleaning your RCA connections - PSP 14:58:09 12/18/15 (0)

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