Why does my vinyl sound so bright?

Arthur, absolutely start completely over and remount as Ncarv mentioned...good luck!

How clean is your stylus? A gooped up stylus can make things sound garbled and distorted.

As for the original problem, I'll vote with Eldartford. I think you are discovering that where ever and on what ever the table was originally sited was causing some smearing that made the presentation sound warmer. After moving the table to its new location you are hearing better attack and harmonics. Stll, it never hurts to re-check everything.

Cleaned the stylus, the mounting is visually good, and it measures properly. I'm going to take it (tonearm and all) tomorrow to a local shop to have it looked at, I'm relatively certain the stylus is damaged/significantly altered somehow. It sounds like rocks and water are running under it during playback, I don't know much, but I know this sounds like something much more than an alignment issue.

Thanks for all the help!

Shows that advice is great, good advice is better, and in the end you have to rely on your own perceptions and judgements anyway. Please let us know how it turns out, and best of luck.

Thanks Tobias, and everyone who chimed in. I actually learned quite a bit yesterday from all of your replies, so I'm a few degrees less of an imbecile (about my vinyl rig anyway) and one step closer to having it up and running.

One more quick thought, as to the wall shelf. I didn't really clarify well on that point. I moved the table in December, it has played and sounded fine many times since the move. The brightness, now rocks and water sound, was new in the last week or so.

So assuming the Blackbird might be damaged, It appears a retip on these is fairly pricey, any thoughts in the direction of the value/dependability of a retip versus spending $5-700 for a new cartridge?