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Suggestions Please-Sound coming out of one speaker

Hi Friends.
I recently moved my setup from one room to another and when I setup my turntable, sound is only playing out of one channel/speaker. I'm going to try to describe the situation and hopefully I can get a potential diagnosis of where issue could be in my system.

I connected a new Denon 103r cartridge to the four tone arm wires correct. I can't see any issues with the wire connectors on the tone arm wire and the pins on the cartridge. I have the cartridge hooked up to a OL Silver arm. This arm has the IC's connected to the tone arm wire. I connected the IC's to my Supratek Pre-amp, which has a built in phono stage. The pre-amp is a tube driven. To try and locate the issue, I switched the right and the left IC from the TT and attached it to the pre-amp switched, the sound still came from the same speaker but I would have expected the sound to switch to the other speaker. Just for giggles, I switched the configuration of the wires in my tone arm around and I got some sound from the silent speaker.

I haven't swapped the tubes in the right and left channel on the pre-amp yet. Maybe the issue could be with the tubes in the phono stage of the pre-amp. I'm going to try swapping these tubes out tonight. I hope I don't have any major repair issues, but if I do I want to make sure I can diagnose this issue.

I don't have any issue with sound coming out of one speaker from my CD player.

Any suggestions on what the issue could be?

Thanks.
dsiggia
jea48
2,944 posts
 
03-05-13: Dsiggia
One other observation I noticed, any sound that was primarily coming out of the speaker that was playing very soft was primarily of the mid-range and low frequencies, I didn't hear any high frequencies coming from the tweeter.

If you take the right channel IC RCA plug, from the TT, and plug it into the good channel RCA jack of the phono preamp and it sounds ok through that channel speaker,

and then unplug the right channel IC RCA plug from the good channel of the phono preamp and plug in the left channel IC RCA plug into the RCA jack of the good channel of the phono preamp and that sounds ok through the good channel speaker then I would say the problem is in the phono preamp.

You said in your first post that the line stage of the preamp worked fine because you checked it playing a CD.

The sound you said you could hear faintly through the bad channel of the phono preamp could be nothing more than cross talk from the good channel.

I assume the preamp has a selector switch that switches from phono to line stage. Mechanical rotary switch? Try rotating it back and forth a few times. May the contacts are dirty or corroded on the bad channel.

Also make sure you are plugging the TT ICs plugs in all the way in the RCA input jacks of the phono preamp.

Make sure you are plugging both of the TT RCA plugs into the Phono input jacks. Maybe you had a brain fart and the channel that is faint sounding is not plugged into a Line stage input by accident.... That wouldn't be the first time that has happened.
Jim
manitunc
795 posts
 
from what I understand, you switched the cartride leads from one channel the the next, and sound came out of the previously dead speaker that would suggest to me that the cartridge is dead in one channel, otherwise changing the leads would not have moved the sound. everything from the leads to the speaker remained the same, just the output from the cartridge was moved from one channel to the next.
jea48
2,944 posts
 
Manitunc,

Quote from the OPs original post.

I connected the IC's to my Supratek Pre-amp, which has a built in phono stage.

The pre-amp is a tube driven.

To try and locate the issue, I switched the right and the left IC from the TT and attached it to the pre-amp switched,

the sound still came from the same speaker but I would have expected the sound to switch to the other speaker.
Dsiggia 03-04-13
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lewm
6,770 posts
 
I don't know why I am pursuing this, but Jea wrote, "The sound you said you could hear faintly through the bad channel of the phono preamp could be nothing more than cross talk from the good channel." I agree with Jea, and that was a good thought on his part (or her part). The fact that switching the wires at the cartridge resulted in just slightly more sound coming from the "dead" speaker is probably due to the fact that the crosstalk from channel B into channel A is greater in db than the crosstalk from channel A into channel B. This is commonly true unless azimuth has been meticulously adjusted.

Soooo. This means the speaker is not really "dead", because it can make sounds. It also means the cartridge is in fact fine, because it can drive the "good" speaker when its leads are switched. It also means that the OP needs to start swapping leads on down the chain of components that feed the speaker in question. At some point, the problem should switch sides, from one speaker to the other, and then the OP will have found his problem.
jea48
2,944 posts
 
Hi Lewm,

The preamp has a built in phono preamp. The Line stage section of the preamp works fine when the OP plays CDs in his CDP.

I believe this is what the preamp looks like. I could not find a picture showing the rear panel of the unit. Nor could I find any user info on the preamp.

The preamp is hand crafted and I believe it is point to point wired.

Jim
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