Persistent ground buzz

I have a very frustrating recurring problem with ground buzz. It's a fairly high frequency buzz and it is pretty silent but still quite annoying when listening to headphones. If I twirl and bend the mounted TT cables, which have the ground wire attached running along between the signal wires, I can momentarily remedy the problem but it usually comes back straight away. Sometimes though, it has fixed it for days or even weeks! While bending and twirling I get some sporadic static crackle in one or the other speaker. Is my mounted TT-interconnect bunk or how can I remedy this permanently? I would be very thankful for any answers or tips how to fix this!

Cheers!
Johan

Sorry! It's a Pro-ject Debut III Esprit turntable, the interconnects are factory mounted to the TT and hooked to my Reflex M, grounded correctly there of course, and the cartridge is an Ortofon OM40. The arm is the factory mounted standard that comes with the TT. I'm sorry I can't supply any more precise details, I had just hoped this was a well known problem with an easy solution regardless of the make or specs of the turntable.
Also, I forgot to add in the earlier post that when I touch the Reflex and thus ground it through my physical self the problem ceases. Therefore I guess that I could perhaps fix it by connecting the Reflex ground post to that on my line amp, but would this be safe doing? I'm not quite versed enough when it comes to electronics to dare try this without someone who is saying so.
Thanks for taking the time helping me out Graham!


Edited by suede - 05 Apr 2012 at 6:10pm

Hi Suede some practical tests you can do:

Graham Slee wrote: It does make me wonder if there is any ground continuity between arm "wand" and arm base on the Pro-Ject? In olden days arm manufacturers used 5 pieces of wire: 4 for signal connections to the cartridge and one to connect the "wand" to the arm base because the engineers of yesteryear had real brains... they knew arm bearings are poor electrical conductors and without the 5th wire eventually buzz would enter the equation. I'm not saying it's this.

There are in fact 5 pieces of wire here. 4 for signal and one ground wire connected to a screw on the underside of the arm at the headshell end, just behind the cartridge and all its connectors/wires. And it does in fact seem to have been badly soldered to the spade on the screw and is now loose. It's impossibly thin, not much thicker than an eyelash, so it doesn't surprise me that it has come loose. It has a rubber "sock" or tube around the connection which before hid the bad connection. The wire does however stick to the old solder if I make it, very weakly but still. It fixes the problem so maybe I can live with this for now. The deeper buzz/hum I get when I happen to meddle with the cartridge connector wires, is that normal or is it due to the bad earth connection on the arm you'd say?
Thanks for everyone's great help here!