Before you go nuts, give the unit some playing time to burn in. I just set-up a SME table with a Grado reference, and it took a good 40 hrs. for the sound to open up. I am not familiar with the table; just know of it. Can the phono cable to the pre-amp be replaced with an after market premium cable (most stock cables are dreadful!) Also, what are you using for a phono pre-amp? You might want to give Grado a call. They told me that that for the VTA, their cartridges should appear to have a slight backwards tilt (the bottom surface of the cartridge should not be parallel to the record surface but appear to be SLIGHTLY higher in the front than the back. Email me if I can be of help. Good luck!
Help: New Rega P3 & Grado Platinum; No highs
This is my first table and it seems terribly simple
to set up but alas, I am defeated. The sound coming
out of this combo is muted, dull, and with no high
frequencies. Switch to my CD and things seem
right again.
What I did:
I aligned the Cart with the cardboard alignment gadget
I set the bias and tracking weight to 0
I balanced the arm to just above the LP using the weight
I set the tracking weight to 1.5
I set the bias to 1.5
Result: dull, lifeless, mushy sound with no highs.
I increased the tracking weight and bias to experiment
but it didn't help. After two 3 hours I decided the right
thing to do was to search for a rope and hang myself but
I couldn't find one so I had a shot of tequila and went to
bed instead.
I also notice that the tone arm lifter level doesn't rise
high enough to push the arm up so I have to slowly
drop the arm on an lp. This seems like it *could*
easily bend the cantilever so I would like to know how
to fix this as well.
I'm in Seattle so if there are any local analogue experts
reading this, I'd love to chat on the phone.
Thanks
Tom