I managed to set up the unit upstairs last night but had to tiptoe as to not bother the baby. Initially I set up per the manual, with the turntable and the amp plugged into the switched sockets of the preamp. What I noticed was that I got some faint sound out of the speakers but there was an intermittent thump that seemed unusual. I disconnected the speakers because my wife yelled at me and I was worried. I then turned the unit back on and noticed in the right channel on the LED display an occasional spike in the db that would essentially go to clipping, it was intermittent and only on the right. I was very tired so went to bed. This morning I woke up, I unplugged everything from the AMP and powered back up with no speakers and tone control/ambience disabled and the bass knobs turned down on the preamp: no thumping noted on the LED display. with preamp and/or amp volume up the LED display did not budge, whereas the right channel seemed to pick up some noise at around 1 o clock on the gain setting. I think something is up with the preamp, maybe an incompletely cleaned pot or something. Anyway, just wanted to update what happened.
MAN it looks gorgeous on the desk though!