Well, Merry Christmas and Holiday from an LP12 owner here;
Joe, I just went through 3 months of a similar problem with an intermittent drop out with my older LP 12/Lingo/Troika/Ekos. One channel would cut in and out with music at times. Then it would stay out for a longer periods; I refitted cables and connectors, which helped for a few weeks and I thought little of it. As the channel dropped out for longer periods of time eventually the cable jostling didn't help as it did on some occasions before.
Testing the Troika cartridge leads was not revealing or helpful . Though stored and used little, it may have seen too many years and developed suspension problems. I do not have duplicate components for everything to swap out and check and I could not just put the Troika in another turntable setup. Swapping channels isolated the placed the problem before the preamp. So when I buy a cheap MM cartridge and put it the LP12 and find both channels now working fine the next 3 days I'm convinced the Troika is faulty and need to figure a hefty budget for replacing it, and perhaps going ahead with silver or Cardas front to back TT rewiring for the LP12, which had been one of the potential problems.
After weeks of researching cartridges, and tonearm rewiring, etc (and fortunately before buying any) with sporadic listening the channel again starts dropping out, but now it stays out---steady, consistent, predictable---to where it is easy to troubleshoot and isolate--NOT to the LP12 but rather downstream to the American Hybrid Technology phono stage. It turned out that there was a cracked/loose solder joint(s) in the connections power supply umbilical into the board on the main unit. Being 15-20 years old both R and L connections were weak and needed reworked. Whether an initial cold solder joint or just aging and strain from connecting/disconnecting the umbilical was impossible to tell and didn't matter.
[btwThe Troika works fine it turns out when the phono stage is working, as is the entire LP 12 setup. I must admit it can be easy to jump to conclusions and blame older gear- especially wading through the dialogue and diatribe between all the Linnies and LP12 Bashers-kinda makes you want to tear your table apart and rewire it...though it might be a good upgrade for a later time it shouldn't be an emotional knee jerk reaction I felt at first...]
I came to a reasonable conclusion early on that was entirely wrong when swapping out cartridges because of the intermittent nature of the problem and not being able to confirm the Troika as the problem in another system, and nearly spent thousands to fix a $150 problem. I was lucky to have waited looking at options and have things worsen and declare itself further; it also helped immensely having some duplicate components --so when an older Adcom processor phono stage was substituted in the system and resolved the the drop out for a perfect 10-14 days it was then clear to take the AHT phono stage in for testing in another system. A few dabs of solder and cable anchor and all is well. What a vexing problem from a tiny, inconspicuous spot. Whether the source for your problem ends up similar or not I wish the best of luck, perseverance and much patience. and Happy Holidays.
Lary
