I let my vinyl OCD go briefly, and now playback unlistenably distorted in right channel...

Hi people,

I'm really hacked off. I have borderline OCD when it comes to vinyl, in that it stresses me out to let anyone else anywhere near my turntable, for fear that they'll do something wrong and end up damaging something.

For that reason, other than me, only my girlfriend (who knows exactly how to do things "my way") has ever touched the setup.

Until today; when my girlfriend and I had a friend round playing some records. All was good. Then they continued whilst I was in the kitchen preparing dinner. As I was out there an hour and my girlfriend was to and fro helping me, our friend ended up flipping sides a few times on some albums.

My immediate reaction was to panic and rush out and do it for him, but I decided I'd really better be a little less crazy and just let him do it, cause you know, what was the worst that was going to happen?

Of course I then saw him pick up and drop the tone arm manually as well as stop and start the platter whilst the needle was down on the record. ARGH! Again, no, let it go and stop being so freaked out, James...

Anyway, later this evening I came to play a disc on my own, and lol and behold my playback is screwed. The right channel is completely distorted to the point of being totally unlistenable. (And that's not me being picky, it was obvious to everyone, from the other room.)

I checked my VTF and antiskate to check nothing changed there and all seems ok. I took off the head shell and looked at the cart under a magnifier - the cantilever appears straight and there is no dirt on the stylus.

So I'm stumped. Could something my friend did have caused this?

Assuming my friend's actions are a red herring and it's a total coincidence, any thoughts about what could have gone wrong?

I have tried several different albums with the same result, but not yet tried changing anything else. That's tomorrow's fun.

 

In my experience, when this sort of thing happened, my stylus was kaput.

 

Check the leads, reverse the leads. If the problem channel switches, could be the cartridge suspension.

 

Wow! I'd never let anybody touch my stuff like that. Never. Not in a million years.

People who don't own this stuff don't tend to be aware of how fragile these parts are and how to operate them safely.

 

And likely have no idea the costs of your cartridge or its repait.

 

I let people switch out CDs but not LPs. I usually don't bother playing LPs when people are over anyway. My friends have CD collections and that's what their comfortable with.

 

I know, I know. But I'm acutely aware of being perceived as a "control freak" and "OCD" and am trying to be more easy going in life in general... well, maybe I'm like that for a reason!

 

So that sounds like a good place to start. The leads are fixed to the Technics (as with most Technics), so I can only switch them at the pre-amp or the amp. Or both?

Not sure which will help me learn something most easily...

 

Hopefully what happened is that something's blown in the pre-amp and I have an excuse to upgrade it

 

Should be easy to isolate to phono section or cart or ???. I keep most away from TT for same reason, to avoid stoppage of music!

 

sounds like the cart to me. I had a sudden sibilence issue lately and that was a direct cause of a damaged cart. Damaged by me!!!!

 

I really hope not, as it'ss one thing I didn't want to have to replace... unless I can afford an upgrade!

Any idea how you damaged your cart?

 

First thing I would do, even though there is no visible dirt, is to clean the stylus.

Second thing would be to check the alignment. Seems a stretch that it could be put out of whack by what your friend did but worth a look before going any further.

 

I don't believe that your friend messed up with touching the cart wires, or playing with VTA, or doing some other adjustments, so I'm afraid that he simply dropped the needle causing some bad damage...the other option is that your amp or speaker coincidentally blown at the same time he was alone in the room - it's not impossible, but highly unlikely...

 

Nothing to do with being OCD about it. It's just common sense. No one touches any of my turntables.

 

What cartridge is it?

 

They're fixed at the headshell, but you can switch leads at the cart.

 

Kakistocracy.

 

Right, exactly.

And of course I checked my CD player and my cable box and both play perfectly fine through the same amp in both channels.

Damn, that's an expensive afternoon.

 

Ortofon Blue with a stylus that had about 50 hours' play on it.

 

Good point, I will check that tonight. I also have the old stylus still, which was not completely unusable but was getting a bit worn. I'll try that and see if that makes a difference.

 

Guess you'll have to apply a filter so you can distinguish between situations where damage to pricey items can occur or not.

If you want to ensure nobody knocks your picture frames accidentally so they're all perfectly aligned, that's one thing but no way would I let anybody operate my turntable regardless of who it is or how I would be perceived. It's my house and my pricey possessions for which I've worked hard. For some people, that's their car. For me, it's my vinyl setup and my guitar gear.

 

I let my wife handle the record collection and the turntable - her only fault is sometimes forgetting to clean the stylus. That little Shure MX97e brush really picks up the errant cat hair. My good friend, and fellow audiophile, also has stereo privileges but his set up is more expensive than my current one and he understands the sensitive nature of the medium.

My 15yo special needs son, on the other hand, isn't allowed to play anything in the record collection. He's a notorious finger-printer on DVDs/CDs. So he can request a record and we'll put it on for him. Same goes for other friends and family.

 

This is very true. Not wanting my girlfriend to leave bottles of cosmetics everywhere = OCD.

Not wanting someone to break a grand's worth of TT and cart = sensible.

 

One channel sounding really way wrong and not the other sounds like it might be a problem elsewhere in the system than the phono setup (damage to the cartridge would probably affect both channels, even if not symmetrically). Do other sources play without problems? I would start the cable switching process to isolate the source of the problem. For ease, I would start at the speaker end first. It might be that a speaker was damaged if the system was being played loudly and the needle was dropped on the record. It could be the case that the problem happening when someone else operated the turntable is just a coincidence and the problem could be anywhere else in the system.