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Cartridge polarity?

Yesterday I was placing my ZYX cart on another headshell. Somehow I reversed the red/green wires. The sound changed in these ways: separation increased substantially, vocals wandered more to one side and when they were centered, they were less focused, bass decreased in impact but soundstaging increased phenomenally especially depth-wise. When I re-connected the wires correctly, the sound was back to normal. Is there a polarity issue? Should the wires be reversed? If I reverse the wires and the soundstage increase stays along with appropriately centered vocals, will it cause a problem with my system?

The system:
Mitsubishi LT-30
Zyx R100H
Sansui (upgraded, new caps etc) AU-D11 integrated
Kirksaeter 220 speakers
All Vampire CCC wire

Thanks all.
mt10425
mt10425 OP
1,138 posts
 
Thanks Bob. I understand both sides being connected in phase. If I connect both sides out-of-phase, would I still get the enormous soundstage, would the bass return and would there be any damaging effects?
casey33
260 posts
 
Both channels reversed wouldn't be out of phase,merely left channel on right side and right on left,no? However for an adventure in soundstage I recommend Morton Subotnick "Sidewinder" it has deliberately out of phase synthesized bass parts mixed in with properly phased sounds.On elctrostats the sound seems to almost come from behind you.Definetly makes your skin crawl.
mt10425 OP
1,138 posts
 
Thanks Casey. The plus and minus would be reversed not left and right.
honest1
572 posts
 
I'm guessing it wouldn't be any different than if you wired one speaker out of phase. The only problem I can imagine would be grounding. I don't really understand how turntables are grounded, but I do know that when the grounding isn't right, you can get a woofer-shredding hum through your speakers. Maybe someone who understands this can chime in, whether it's an issue or not?
lewm
6,770 posts
 
If you exchange hot for ground for both L and R channels, you are reversing the phase by 180 degrees but the two channels will still be in phase with respect to each other. For those who can hear such a phase difference, it makes a difference in their listening pleasure. (One way seems more "right" than the other.) Problem is that no two LPs, and even sometimes no two tracks on a single LP, were recorded with consistent phase. So, if you want the luxury of optimizing for phase, I suggest you research phono preamps, some of the better ones of which have phase switches on their front panels or via remote. You might also do a search on these archives for more info on this subject.

What you did, reversing the phase of one channel, results in one channel being 180 degrees out of phase with the other. This gives exactly the phenomena you describe and is not desirable. One of the Stereophile test CDs demonstrates the effect when the two channels are out of phase with one another. I've heard it, and you described it pretty well. If you like the effect, by all means go for it.
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