Lower gain in left channel.


I just noticed last night that the volume from my left speaker is lower than my right speaker. It is enough that images are pulled towards the right speaker, but it is not glaring. Could this be a sympton of a power tube going bad? I'm running An Air Tight Preamp (with 6 month old new tubes) and a c-j Premiere 11A. I'm not sure the age of any of the tubes of the c-j, I bought it used and have had it for about 1 1/2 years. Would a tube or tubes going bad manifest in this way. There are no strange noises or anything coming from the left channel, just the slightly lowered gain. Thanks for your help.
128x128jond
I would suggest narrowing the problem to a particular piece of hardware. Maybe you've already done so, but I would swap the cables between preamp and power amp, and swap speaker cables or speakers whichever is easiest. I had a similar problem with a pair of electostatics and it turned out to be the crossover in one speaker was bad. Oddly enough it was the speaker that was loudest that was the culprit.
Jim Robinson

Some music is recorded that way, you'll notice a difference on some recordings from song to song...
Jwrobinson - I tried switching cables (ICs and Spkr cables) but the problem persisted. What it looks like is the right channel of my amp. Wondering what could the repaire man have done to it while he replaced the capacitor, if anything. Or is it possible that a new capacitor could function slightly differently (breakin etc) from the old ones.

Pops - I considered that. I thought it was the recording at first so I tried several cds. They all displayed the same problems - right channel slighty quieter than the left. For a while I thought it was my hearing, especially since I mostly use my left ear to answer phone calls etc. I thought I might just hear slightly better on my left ear. But when I switched amps (a friend's amp) the problem went away. Unfortunately my preamp does not have a balance or separate left/right gain controls. Man it sucks!!!
Thought I'd pass this along -- just spoke to the distributor of my amp. While speaking to him I realized one other variable in this problem. The power tubes (2 pairs of 6C33C-B) in my amp are not a matching quad. This could potentially be a problem. My distributor suggested, instead of buying matching tubes now (expensive proposition) I should try an bias one channel slightly higher than the other to see what the impact is. I will try this next when I get home from work. I'll keep you posted...
I'm having a similar problem with my 'phones. Both channels operate, but right is clearly "louder" than left. They are HD600s, run off of the tape out of my pre to a Headroom Home. Same problem from both headphone jacks, problem remains the same when input cables to Headroom are swapped, so I'm guessing its the headphone amp. I'll call Headroom tomorrow, but I have noticed a similar (but to a lesser degree) problem with my overall system. Could it be the CDP (CAL CL-10)? Hard to imagine that could be the case, but maybe I'll try swapping the outputs from the DAC, or running the analog output from the CL-10 internal dacs direct to the pre. Maybe its due to coriolis force; anyone down under have reverse problem?;>).