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

Showing 1 response by honest1

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?