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Stylus not tracking and sounds terrible

I haven't used my TT in about 6 months due to a remodeling project. The TT was not moved, just not used. Yesterday I fired it up, tried to play some new vinyl, and ran into a problem.

The sound is terrible, shrill and scratchy sounding with no bass. The stylus randomly skates and hops. I tried playing a couple of records I know sound great but the problem remained.

The VTF, VTA, and azimuth are set correctly. I swapped out cables to and from the TT to the phono amp but still have the problem. I tried balanced and single ended cables to my pre from the phono pre.

I tried increasing VTF, playing with the VTA, disconnecting my subs, nothing changed.

The TT is a VPI Aries 1, Benz-Micro LO cartridge, Pass Aleph Ono pre. I've owned all of them since new or almost new so it all has some years on it but it sounded great before. Could the cartridge go bad in 6 months by just sitting there unused?

I had a similar problem a while ago and determined it was vibration/resonance from my room. I have the Aries sitting on a Ginko cloud platform now and it is pretty well isolated.

Everything sounded great the last time I played music on it. The only thing that changed was the location of the phono pre. It used to sit next to the TT but now my ARC amp is in that place. Could the tube amp be doing something here? The TT is right next to it on the same shelf.

Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.
nolacap
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
9,815 posts
 
@nolacap, try a set of the Townshend Audio Seismic Pods (Size "B") under your Aries. If you remove the VPI cone feet, they will fit right in place of them. They have adjustable top caps for leveling the table. The Pods provide real isolation, unlike the stock feet. You will have to put something under the motor pod (perhaps Herbies Tenderfeet), as the Pods raise the height of the table.
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
Just to butt in and say transformers generate quite a good size magnetic field due to induced magnetic field through wires. There is leakage of the magnetic field even for toroidal transformers which as I understand it minimize the magnetic field effects. This is why wrapping a transformer with low frequency high permeability mu metal should reduce local effects and thus improve the sound. Wrapping twice even better! 🤗 Three feet I’d opine is sufficiently far away.
mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 
That is bad nolacap. The little wires on the coil of the bad channel have broken. Happens a lot. New cartridge time. I have had this happen several times over the years usually to old cartridges that have seen a lot of miles. 
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
After 20 years nolacap you can treat yourself to a new cartridge. If you liked what you had then the safe bet is to stick with Benz. Stick with the same or greater output, get the most you can afford, it will be like what you had but completely across the board better in every way. That's what I found going from a Micro-Glider to Benz Ruby H. The same, only a whole lot better in every way.

Or if you can swing it, Koetsu Black Goldline is another one very similar so the only surprise will be how much better things can keep getting and still be supremely balanced with nothing hyped or exaggerated in any way. Just more and more refined.


nolacap OP
84 posts
 
This whole thing is a silver lining. One result of the renovations is that my lps now reside close to my system. For the past several years my records were located in the next room. The result was that I didn’t play them as often as I would like.
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