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I am at the end of my rope, please help

I have a problem that I can not solve and makes no sense to me at all.
My right channel is stronger than my left by a large margin. I can plug my tonearm cable directly into a Fozgometer (measures left and right output) and I get a substantially stronger signal on the right side. I confirmed this with my Voltmeter to make sure there was not a problem with the Fozgometer. So, as far as I can tell, this narrows the problem down to the Cart, Tonearm, Tonearm wire or the table.

Here is what I have tried:
1. Changed Azimuth in both directions. Small change but still much stronger on the right side.
2. Changed antiskating. Very little change.
3. replaced the cartridge. No Change.
4. replaced the tonearm and cartridge. No Change.
5. replaced the tonearm, cartridge and tonearm wire. No change.
6. I have used a second test record. No Change
My turntable is perfectly level.
I simply do not see how this is possible! I have an $83,000 system that I can not listen to. Any ideas would be much appreciated.

My system:
DaVinci Turntable > Lyra Titan i > Schroeder Reference tonearm > Manley Steelhead > Stealth Indra cables > VTL 450 amps > Stealth Mlt speaker cables > Vienna acoustic Mahler speakers
audioraider
almarg's avatar
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almarg
8,673 posts
 
Ralph, note that in the first paragraph of his post of 12/11 Audioraider indicated that the new cartridge had not ever been connected to the phono stage, yet still measured identically to the previous cartridge (with the Fozgometer, I assume).

And the Fozgometer itself can apparently be ruled out as the cause of the measured imbalances since the imbalance followed the channel swap that was performed with the cartridge connections. And also because of the consistency that was observed between the measurements on the first two cartridges and the listening results.

It is indeed baffling. Perhaps another rope should be obtained, and spliced onto the first one....

Best regards,
-- Al
dgarretson
2,394 posts
 
Ralph, I would add to your list the experimental reversal of cartridge phase on one channel-- no matter what the ohmmeter says. Incorrect relative phase will definitely shift the image to one side.

Also, has each tonearm wire been checked with an ohmmeter to confirm that there are no leaks between the wires or from any wire to ground?
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
7,068 posts
 
Good point David. I had that demonstrated in spades at the recent RMAF. The complaint in the system was that the image was off to one side and it was being blamed on the amps. What was really going on was that the speaker was out of phase in one channel. As soon as that was corrected, the image was exactly centered.
hifihvn
943 posts
 
I don't know if this would be a contributing factor on not.In the 70s to 80s,I did some recording from LP's to tape,it didn't matter what system or combination of gear,the right channel always read higher than the left,if memory is correct . When I tried to match them up with the VU meters,I ended up with a imbalance between left and right channels.
lewm
6,770 posts
 
Audiorader, I am not sure this is even important, but when you say that the problem switched from one side to the other after you switched the pairs of leads at the cartridge clips, do you mean as measured by the Foz or did you also listen to some music and confirm that the lower output problem had now switched to the opposite channel in your whole system?

Apropos of the question of phase, I agree with Dave and Atmasphere that this could be the issue. One wonders whether your headshell is miswired so that in one channel the "hot" clip is really going to ground in the preamp, and the "ground" clip is actually going to the hot pin on the RCA plug. Thus all could appear to be correctly wired while in fact that one channel is out of phase with respect to the other. This defect also does serious damage to bass coherence and stereo imaging. It's hard to listen to, in fact. If your tt, platter, and tonearm mount are all level and plane parallel to each other, then phase error is a possible cause.
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