Just recently, I have purchased a Technics SL-D30 turntable. Sort of a vintage gear as this model was made and sold in 1982. Being 30+ years old, most of the original accessories (manual, cables, box) is now long gone. Mine came only with generic RCA cables and original power cable. The ground cable was not included. As you can probably imagine, lack of the grounding cable resulted in a very loud hum and noise. Unfortunately, this turntable (as probably most of Technics turntables) came with a ground cable that attached to the table via a plug. I guess something that looked like a 3.5mm mono phone plug. I have tried some plugs I have in my toolbox but none of them fit. As I was about to put the “new” turntable into my stereo rack so I had to come up with a way to ground it. I was too lazy to go to RadioShack to browse for something that would fit so I have decided to permanently attach the grounding cable to the turntable.Here is what I did:
1. I took a speaker wire, separated it and fed it thru the opening for the grounding plug.
2. A spade connector was attached to the end of the wire. Please note the knot on the wire. It is to prevent pulling the wire thru the case.
3. I have used the existing screw to secure the spade connector.
4. Done. That’s how it looks from the other side.
Do not forget to put back the shield (if you took it off). I have put the bottom cover back on, secured all the screws just to find the metal shield that I forgot to attach.
The whole mod took about 10 minutes and I can now enjoy a hum and noise free sound from my Technics turntable.
Thanks for posting this, I used it to fix the hum in my turntable 🙂
Great idea! Thanks