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Unexpected issues with Rega planar TT, a respectful manufacturer product?

About a year ago I bough a Rega planar 2 turntable. I do not play much LPs, I bought it just for a few LPs I have. It should have around 20 hours of burn-in now. It turned out that a more than $600 unit has  a 1-dollar phono cable incorporated into it (which, by some reason is called a "premium" one). In fact, I did not see an RCA cable that bad even with cheap equipment. Well, not really nice but this was not yet fatal. A few weeks ago,  my attempt to use the TT has failed. One of the channels did not work, and after a few tests it was clear that it is TT, one of the RCA terminals. There was no force made on it or something similar.

Surprisingly, i did not find a technical support option on the Rega web page, they merely send you to their dealers. I have contacted the local Rega dealer and the answer was that they can check replace the cable at a some cost (whereas supposedly, it has a "life-time warranty" and it is a practically new unit). My question was, if they have some instructions to replace their "premium" built-in RCA cable, that I could follow for the replacement. Since then, there was no answer. I also contacted the US/International Rega dealer with whom I bough the TT, still no answer. 

In addition, the TT has another problem, just from the beginning. Normally, when it is powered on, the plate moves to the opposite direction. After several  (identical) attempts (on/off), it may finally choose the right direction. This is of course quite bothering but i did not try to clarify this issue before since i do not use the TT often. 

Normally I try to avoid complains but i think that this case is "quite special".

128x128niodari

Showing 5 responses by audphile1

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
5,443 posts
 

Wait…do the RCAs have any damage? Is the damage visible?

Make sure you checked and confirmed that all the leads are all tightly connected to the cartridge. That’ll do it if one of them came off, you would lose a channel. 
I had the P2 and it’s a very good ‘table despite the cheap looking RCA. Mount a good cartridge on it and couple it with a nice phono stage and it’ll kick butt. 

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
5,443 posts
 

@niodari 

I doubt it’s the cable. Did you actually physically check leads on cartridge or just visually inspected it? I had this happen to me with P2. Make sure the leads are on tightly. Take a tweezer or thin needle nose pliers and check every one of the 4 leads on the cartridge. 
If no luck there’s something else going on.

What cartridge is it?

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
5,443 posts
 

I still think it’s cartridge related. Second guess would be a bad tonearm wire. One other check you can do is try to flip the channels by swapping leads and connecting the cartridge left ch to right and right ch to left. See what happens. If the problem moves to another channel, you most likely have a failed cartridge. If you have another cartridge you can try it would help. 

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
5,443 posts
 

So now you know it’s not the cartridge. It was worth checking.
You should contact Rega for an authorized repair center that would be able to address both your issues…dead channel and the motor spinning in a wrong direction. 
The P2 is a decent table. it’s unfortunate you ran into these issues. 

audphile1's avatar
audphile1
5,443 posts
 

Hey that’s awesome!
as far as cartridges…I used Goldring E3 and it was a notable improvement over the stock Carbon. You might as well upgrade. What’s the point of AT cartridge that’s supposedly the same as carbon?

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