Help: Something wrong to my amp???

Hi Sean,
How can you check your cable, and what equipment do you use to check the cable? Please show me how.
Thank you very much
DT

Thanks for this thread -- I had the same problem after installing a new pair of balanced cables between my preamp and my power amp; the image was skewed to the left. A mono recording made the problem more obvious; swapping the two cables moved the problem over to the right. I will be contacting the manufacturer of the cables!

Check your cables first! I also blamed my classe CA-200, three years ago, got a new CA-200, did not work, got CA-400 did work intermittently. Then I doubted my preamp. One day when it happened, I happened touch my balance cable by mistake, and what do you know, it turned out to be bad XLR connection on one of my straight wire cable. I fixed it and it is been no problem eversince. It took 3 years and two upgrades to get there. On retrospect, I guess it was good lesson learned and also , I got the bigger and powerful amp, as result.

That's great that you found the problem, Worldcup. It's kind of funny to me that this was your problem. As a matter of coincidince, i just got some cables in today that i had purchased. As a matter of "routine inspection", i always measure cables for basic electrical characteristics and to make sure that they are okay before hooking them up. As it turns out, one of the two cables measured very poorly. After taking them apart, i found a very poor connection that resulted in a 500% increase in impedance !!! While i don't know if the person that owned these tried to repair the cables and screwed up or if that's how he got them, all i know is that the average person would have thought that there was something DRASTICALLY wrong with their sound and performance. Who knows, maybe that's why the guy that i bought them from sold them !?!?!?! Either way, it was easily corrected and like you, all is well now. Hopefully, our similar problems might help others diagnose nagging problems that they too have never been able to pinpoint. CHECK YOUR CABLES... : ) Sean
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hi,
Abtract7 was right. The problem is the cable (XLR). The image is now right on the center after I changed the IC connecting from preamp to amp. Talked to the manufacture this morning and they told me to send the cable for repair.
Thanks for your help
DT

Try double-checking the polarity on your speaker cable connections on the back of the amp; it's easy to get it wrong with some Classe' amps.

Excuse me if I've read this wrongly, but are you saying that the image was center before you sent the CA201 for repair and it is now off-center since the CA201 has been returned..? If this is so, then double-check the CA201. Regards, Richard.

Are you using balanced cables? If so it is possible that one of the hot leads has a short (most likely at the conector and easy to repair). This way you get some signal--but only half and the soundstage shifts away from the problem cable. Do as no_money suggests, try switching the cable--if the problem shifts to the other side, then it's the cable. I had a balanced set of cables and one of the hot leads was shorted to ground--this was a pretty expensive cable too. I just had to reposition the insulation where it was terminated and it was fine.

My guess would be the cable, I've had 1 set of ic's and a pair of mit speaker cables that failed in my lifetime, it's the last thing you would suspect. the mit's had a short in the network and caused failure after about 5 minutes of playing and the ic's just stopped transmitting signal.

Try moving the interconnects from one channel to the other and see if the image follows? I don't know if a rack would have that dramatic of an affect on the center image. Did you move the speakers while setting up the rack?