Grounding a turntable?

[7romanstatesmen]

I came accross a turntable at the local Salvation Army a couple of days back and picked it up. It works perfectly, except for emitting a constant low-pitch, and rather loud, hum. In between the RCA cables that go to the reciever there is a third wire, no connector, with the insulation stripped of the tip, so I'm assuming that this wire can fix the problem. I tried holding it to the reciever case (hopefully grounding it), but that didn't do anything.

Can anyone tell me what the deal with this is? I've never seen a third bare wire on a RCA cable, turntable or otherwise. Thanks!

[Professor]

It used to be pretty rare to not see the extra wire, and yes that is there to ground the table. Make sure you're plugging into the "Phono" input on your receiver, and you should see a little screw in between the two RCA jacks, or perhaps just to the side of them, maybe marked with a little triangle. Attach the ground there and you should be set. It may not completely eliminate the hum, but it should something to tone it down.

-Jeremy

[7romanstatesmen]

Alright, I'll give that a shot! I've got it plugged into the phono inputs, so I'll just have to look around for a screw. Thanks a lot!

[JB]

Sometimes those screws no the reciever still don't do a very good job of grounding...if that's the case then you may want to attach it to something else. I have two different turntables that are close to racks so I just ground them with a rack screw.