Vinyl turntable problem, the sound is awful

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pedrosanto Posted messages 31 Status Member -  
 simon -
Hi everyone, I found an old turntable, part of a complete system that belonged to my grandmother! It's a Pioneer ES-2000 (well, that's the name of the complete stereo system...)
I then bought a used JVC R-S77 amplifier.
I don't know much about hi-fi gear, but the amp does have a Phono output, to which the turntable is connected. In the turntable manual it says that it must be plugged into Phono, so apparently it does not have a built-in preamp.

The problem is that the sound is quite awful... it crackles, or rather I’d say there’s a big crackling noise behind which you can sometimes hear a bit of music! I first thought about the speakers (I haven't bought real speakers yet; I only plugged in the ones from my stereo to test if everything worked), but when plugging a headset directly into the amp, the sound remains terrible, and especially the amp also acts as an FM receiver, and there the sound comes out perfectly... So it would seem that the problem comes from the turntable, or perhaps the amp but only when using the turntable as a source...

As I said, I don't know much (I basically just recovered a collection of vinyl records, and I thought it would be nice to be able to listen to them!) and the information I found hasn't really helped... I’ll try to give you as many details as possible so you have a better idea... So I haven’t seen this turntable work for quite a long time! (my grandmother told me it worked correctly, but it hasn't been used for a long time), another thing (maybe that's totally normal) my vinyl records look warped when the turntable starts to spin, although I tested with a new disk, but that doesn't change anything, it also doesn’t look flat! Then when I place the arm, I thought it would “catch” right away, but the needle seems to have a tendency to "wander" above the vinyl and stop wherever it wants...
Is the problem likely coming from the diamond? (I understood that it’s quite common...) or perhaps other things I haven’t thought of.
Sorry if I haven't given you enough info, but I don't know what might be useful or not.
thanks in advance for your responses.
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4 answers