Tone arm wiring issues.

[rickmcvick]

I have a ROK tone arm I installed on my lathe but I'm having trouble getting it grounded.

I have the cartridge head wired directly to RCA male jacks; right and left channels respectively. I have the positive of each channel going to the tip of the RCA, and the negative from each channel going to the sleeve of the RCA jacks. The ground wire was going from a set screw on the base of the tone arm to the ground lug in the preamp, but I have a really loud buzz.

I noticed if I took the right channel RCA jack and unplug it, and touch the tip of it to the shield of the input jack on the pre amp the buzz quiets down a bit. Also if I touch a ground wire to the Left Positive pole on the cartridge itself and the other end to the ground lug on the pre amp it turns into a quiet low buzz.

I double checked the wiring and it's good, I could resolder and see if that helps, but I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. It's a AT TR411 cartridge.

Any tips or advice?

Thanks!

[Radardoug]

Are you sure you are making ground on the arm? If the arm is anodised, you need to scrape off the anodising to make electrical contact to the actual metal.

[rickmcvick]

Not sure if it's anodised.. I've tried various points on the arm and there wasn't a difference. The only major difference I can make is putting the ground wire on the left positive lug on the cart.

[dmills]

Disconnect the cartridge and meter each of the tonearm wires to the arm tube, something may be shorting.
Also meter the arm tube to the ground connection point, sometimes you discover wonders here.