Ok guys, please bear with me as I am new to all of this and trying to take it all in. I recently recieved a Sony PS-X70 turntable that is in excellent condition. Though not top of the line, this is a pretty significant upgrade from the POS I was using before.

Here are my questions -

The first problem I have is that this turntable is huge and does not fit on my entertainment center where my reciever is. I have to put it on a small stand about 5ft away. Obviously the audio cables from the turntable do not reach that far, so I bought two female/female connectors and 6ft of monster audio cables to extend the connection to reach my reciever. However, I need to ground the turntable, and obviously the ground wire won't reach the reciever. I'm trying to to have to completely rearrange all my compenents, but I dont know what else to do. So far I have only come up with two potential options.

I figure I could splice a longer lenght of ground wire to the existing length so that it would reach the reciever. However, I'm worried that having such a long ground wire may still cause some "hum." Also, I'm not sure what sort of wire to use.

The other option I considered was to buy a small pre-amp, place it near the turntable, plug the audio cables and ground into the preamp, then run the monster audio cables to my reciever. Would this work? Which is the better option?

Also, the turntable currently has an audio-technica 6006 cartridge and audio-technica stylus (couldnt find a product number on it). Though both appear to be old, yet in great condition, I am going to change the stylus to be on the safe side. However, I was wondering if anyone would recommend a stylus/cartridge upgrade which would improve the sound quality?

And lastly, this turntable is actually older than I am. Anyone have any input/feedback on this machine? Is this a quality machine that is worth investing any time/money into, or is it more of a temporary fix until I can buy something better.

Thanks in advance for any feedback or advice.

Brian