my sl 1210 is louder on the right channel

Undertow makes a good point. Once you've done the interconnect switching method to track down the offending component, then you can start tube swapping.

Of course, you could start tube swapping from the beginning, and you might get lucky.

Did you check the Azimuth??

No tubes, although thats my next step, i use a cambridge A1 through a 640p and i have checked and re checked all leads and connections, the azimuth looks fine but as i have the sumiko headshell i can at least play around with that, it's not that it's quite on the left channel as some records come out louder. Joni mitcell's hissing of the summer lawn, steely dan's royal scam and utopias oops wrong planet. i have swapped the phono leads from the deck over but that just changes channels, i suppose what i need to do is swap the connections on the cartridge to hear the mix change say on led zep 2 when the drums come out of the left channel and the guitar kicks in on the right after the the middle section, you know the swirley stereo wierd section. if it's clear then it just could be the way it's recorded, if it's muddy then i will know if there's something wrong. I am really confused.

Swapping the phono leads and interconnects will change the left channel to the right speaker and vice versa. But if one channel is always lower than the other...say the left is lower than the right, then swapping the wires at some point in the signal chain should not only change channels from right to left, but the low channel should also change from left to right (or vice versa).

If you swapped phono leads, and the channels changed, but the low channel did not follow the swap, then you know the turntable is not the problem (including the cartridge leads).

Keep swapping until you hear the low channel shift.

Do you have this low channel issue with another source...say a CD player?