bad cartridge or am I overlooking something?


This is a question for some of the serious analog battle axes in the community. I recently decided in the past year to dive into analog. I had been using a planar 25 for about 8 years and found a beautiful VPI HW19MKII in mint condition for an acceptable price and made up my mind. In January of this year I purchased a benz mc20e2lo mc cartridge that I have always seemed to have trouble setting up on my planar 25. Since installing this cartridge on my rewired rb600 and mounting it at exactly 222mm from the spindle on my armboard and aligning it using the baerwald points on the VPI I have noticed several things going on that are not right. The tracking force benz suggests is 2g, when I set the force at 2g and adjust the antiskate the left channel output is noticably higher. above approximately 2.15g the right channel does the same thing. If I get the weight just right sometimes it favors the left, sometimes the right and sometimes it sounds ok. The table is level, the arm is level with the platter and this is the only source I am having problems with. Does anybody know what this could be other than a defective cartridge? The cartridge is still under the 2 year warranty and I would like to take it back to the dealer, but I would like to be informed of what to expect so that I don't get railroaded. Any information or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
maplin
You may find that anti-skate is more easily set by ear rather than by weight.
would over or under compensation cause huge differences in gain? I usually set my anti-skate with a groovelss record, what is the most effective method, how can you audibly discern too much from too little force on anti-skate?
Maplin, a grooveless record? Great idea, but I've never seen one? A little help/advice, please.
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assuming that anti skate is within the ballpark range of acceptable and the cantilever isn't being torqed in any one direction, what else is there? Giving some thought to this it almost seems that the coil/magnet proximity has vertically shifted on one of the channels At a given weight one coil will be closer to the magnet than the other, is this possible?
>>how can you audibly discern too much from too little force on anti-skate?<<

Assuming a good tonearm/cartridge match, good alignment, and proper VTF, excessive anti-skating will manifest itself as distortion/noise in the left channel. Conversely, not enough anti-skating causes same problem in right channel.
PS.
Keep in mind anti-skating is an imperfect science.

There are tonearm/cartridge combinations that require little or none for superb performance.
Try switching the signal and ground connections on the right channel. Could be out of phase. I just went through a similar exp. that sounds what like you describing.
thanks for your responses. The right channel finally burned out today. I called musical surroundings and am sending it back for replacement.