Question about grounding turntable setup

Audio Components Vinyl
1

Hi All,

I just picked up a Nordost Tyr 2 + tonearm cable, which connects my Brinkmann Bardo turntable to my Brinkmann Edison mkii phono.

This tonearm cable has an option to create an additional ground using the cable’s shield. In short, each end of the cable now has two ground wires (total 4 wires) coming out of it; 2 connected to the single grounding post of my turntable, 2 to the single grounding post of my phono stage.

My question is, is there a such thing as too much grounding? If so, what effects can I expect to the sound?

Photos of the phono stage end below!

Thanks,
Andrew

image
image1920×2560 271 KB

image
image1920×2560 221 KB

2

You can have too many grounds which can cause hum. Generally the turntable’s chassis ground is connected to the preamp’s earth ground terminal. The cable’s shield is connected to the preamp’s signal ground. These are different in most preamps. If your tonearm cables are shielded XLRs then that shield usually does not need to be attached. It is needed if you extend an XLR to attach shields between cables.

1 Like
3

Thanks for the reply!

I get less noise with all four ground wires connected, so I assume this is optimal.

I was more worried that too many grounds might hurt the overall performance/ dynamics of my setup, but I don’t notice anything to my ears yet.

1 Like