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What could be wrong?

I was playing an LP on my turntable, changed LP's, cleaned the stylus with my trusty Zerodust and proceeded to play the next LP only to discover that the volume on the left channel was reduced noticeably. At first I thought that maybe one of the tubes in my preamp was dying, so I played a cd on my digital player and everything seemed fine. I checked the DIN and RCA connectors on my tonearm cable, and everything seems ok. I turned the phono preamp on and off and still the left channel volume was reduced.

Do you think that my zerodust gel cleaner somehow damaged my stylus? Or could it be that my phono preamp suddenly malfunctioned? I'm a bit baffled as to what is wrong...

Any suggestions?

calgarian
calgarian5355
Post removed 
stringreen's avatar
stringreen
6,478 posts
 
Sometimes cables oxidize, and just by unplugging and replugging, you have cleaned the connection.
cytocycle
1,043 posts
 
Are you using the arm lift to drop the stylus into the zerodust?

If you are hand holding the zerodust and pushing it up on the stylus it will cause the cantiliever to be stressed side to side and can damage the stylus. One of my local dealers stopped carrying these because of his customers damaging their stylus.
mlsstl
1,440 posts
 
Another issue could be the cantilever on your cartridge is out of position. This could be caused either by mishandling or defect in the cartridge.

Get a pair of magnifying lenses and look at the cartridge straight on from the front. The cantilever should be evenly positioned from left to right in the cartridge body with no tilt on the stylus. If it appears off, this could be generating the volume difference since the far end of the cantilever will be out of position inside the body of the cartridge.

If this is the case, sometimes removing the stylus assembly and reinserting (if removable) will correct the problem. Otherwise you might need a new stylus assembly.

Also check the weight and anti-skate settings on your tonearm, and double check the overall alignment.
piedpiper
753 posts
 
I had this problem with a Sumiko Bluepoint Special and cured it by gyrating the cantelever around in a very small circle. I don't know why this worked but as a last resort I was just screwing around with it trying to find sht was wrong and got lucky. It has croped up once again with the same cart and was cured the same way.
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