Ok to adjust balance to achieve center vocal image?


I have an all analog tube vinyl system and don’t remember having to adjust my balance setting in order to achieve a center vocal image. I do now though. I’m getting a left leaning vocal image with the balance set to zero. Is there a good way to see if this can be fixed so I don’t need to balance adjust to achieve a center vocal image? Could it be a preamp tube going out? Something else? Any harm in just continuing to adjust the balance - meaning am I experiencing any signal loss doing so? 
Thanks! Paul
paulgardner

Showing 3 responses by lewm

Like I said, a small change in anti-skate would not affect channel balance, in my own experience, but your mileage does vary.
A bit better than using a CDP to check for system balance is to use a mono LP, because the signal then traverses the phono section of your preamp and any problems in channel balance that emanate downstream from the record player but in the phono stage will be revealed.  With a mono LP, if all is perfect, the image should be dead center. Then, if you sense channel imbalance, you could use a CDP to ascertain whether the phono system is to blame or not.  I do not mean to step on any comments related to room effects, which I agree certainly can be responsible for an aurally apparent system imbalance.  I honestly do not think that anti-skate, unless it is wildly off in magnitude, makes much difference to channel balance; distortion in one or the other channel would become apparent before imbalance is perceived, in my experience.

Boothroyd, You wrote, "For such a simple tonearm, the Concept/Verify magnetic tonearm can be a bit tricky! Its vertical tracking force can vary wildly with vertical motion, increasing in pressure/force as the arm is raised."  By this I assume you are referring to raising the arm at the pivot. Because later in the same post you seem to be saying that VTF goes up when the cartridge rides up on a warp.  That would not be the case.  VTF should go momentarily down as the cartridge traverses the up-side of a warp or even rides up in the groove, because the center of mass of the cartridge/headshell/tonearm would be shifted rearward toward the pivot.  But changes in VTF seem to be negligible for all but major changes in VTA where the tonearm pivot is raised (or lowered) significantly. (In the context of a prevous thread, several of us measured VTF for various levels of VTA.)
Also, some older jazz vocals were actually originally recorded in mono and then later electronically converted to produce a stereo LP.  In the process, some engineers seem to have placed the vocalist mostly on one channel, typically the left in my experience, and then they placed the rhythm section, at least the bass and drums, on the right.  It's folly to try to fix that particular situation with a balance control.  Best to live with it.