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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

Showing 1 response by smoffatt

smoffatt
205 posts
 
I had the same exact issue with a Dynavector XV1's last year. The right channel was louder. Switching the phono cable at the phono stage input, the left channel became louder. Looking at the styli with a 10X loupe i noticed that the styli was ever so slightly tilted. It appeared that the cantilever had rotated c-clockwise on its axis. I tried to fix that by adjusting/compensating with azimuth but to no avail. I ended up sending the cartridge to Soundsmith. Peter found that the cartridge was seriously flawed. The coils were rotated. He could not re-aligned the coils but was able to fix the problem, removing the styli and mounting one of his Optimized Contour Nude Line contact Styli. Sounds perfect now.

Note: i had bought the cartridge used so i could not use any type of warranty service with Dynavector. The cost for the repairs were approx. $400.00

Send it to Soundsmith and Peter Ledermann will tell you what's wrong with it.

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