"Cars are Cars" by Paul Simon...are my channels reversed?

lewm the OP stated right up front that he knows all his connections are correct. He hasn’t mentioned this happening with anything else. Only on Spotify. Which then for some unfathomable reason instead of just saying oh Spotify and be done with it he frets its something technical and apparently invisible, since he can’t see it. Maybe next the thread will go on for days and weeks and months, all the sages coming up with one idea after another, each less likely than the last, until finally GK and glupson are battling over, well whatever. At that point all best are off.

That’s the alternative. Which one do you prefer? The long or the short?

Brevity is the soul of wit.
-Shakespeare

Don't want this to go on for days/weeks/months...just asking someone to listen to their vinyl version of the song "Cars are Cars". My connections look perfect, but it's very odd that, on the vinyl, the lyric "drive on the left" resides in the right channel of my rig and the lyric "drive on the right" sits in the left channel. If someone out there has the vinyl of "Hearts and Bones" and listens to the song mentioned above, it would be very helpful if they could report what they hear. I do believe it's possible that my new amp, new cart or new tt has a manufacturing flaw.

If we assume the Spotify is correct then your new amp’s core has to be assumed correct also.  If we make an initial assumption nothing is flawed this would leave the turntable and cartridge connections to again be reviewed.  Do you have any orchestral vinyl with a set left placement of the violin sectIon you could use to also double check right and left placement?  Does the turntable have hardwired cables from cartridge to the amp?  If not double check your RCA Interconnect at the turntable.  Also review right and left connection at the amp/preamp just to triple check...  if all those appear correct then the question is the cartridge connections.  Did you mount the cartridge yourself?  Some manufactures have slightly different arrangements of the pins on the back of the cartridge.  Ortofon is different between their MM and MC.  This is likely a place an error can be found and easily corrected.

I don't happen to own the particular Paul Simon album in question, but you might try playing some albums that feature jazz trio or quartet.  In such an ensemble, the pianist is typically on the left and the drummer on the far right, with the bass player in between.  OR, there is a Stereophile test CD with left and right channel signals, for just this purpose.  In other words, as I mentioned earlier, the ball is in your court.  Mentioning the Stereophile test CD also brings to mind that it has tracks for testing system phase.  If one channel is 180 degrees out of phase with the other, this can wreak havoc with left/right localization.  Check it.

Hi 

I have an American pressing. On “Cars are Cars”the lines Drive ‘em on the left and Drive ‘em on the right appear in the Left and Right channels respectively. 
Hope this helps.

Ian