Stylus not tracking and sounds terrible


I haven't used my TT in about 6 months due to a remodeling project. The TT was not moved, just not used. Yesterday I fired it up, tried to play some new vinyl, and ran into a problem.

The sound is terrible, shrill and scratchy sounding with no bass. The stylus randomly skates and hops. I tried playing a couple of records I know sound great but the problem remained.

The VTF, VTA, and azimuth are set correctly. I swapped out cables to and from the TT to the phono amp but still have the problem. I tried balanced and single ended cables to my pre from the phono pre.

I tried increasing VTF, playing with the VTA, disconnecting my subs, nothing changed.

The TT is a VPI Aries 1, Benz-Micro LO cartridge, Pass Aleph Ono pre. I've owned all of them since new or almost new so it all has some years on it but it sounded great before. Could the cartridge go bad in 6 months by just sitting there unused?

I had a similar problem a while ago and determined it was vibration/resonance from my room. I have the Aries sitting on a Ginko cloud platform now and it is pretty well isolated.

Everything sounded great the last time I played music on it. The only thing that changed was the location of the phono pre. It used to sit next to the TT but now my ARC amp is in that place. Could the tube amp be doing something here? The TT is right next to it on the same shelf.

Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.
nolacap

Showing 1 response by cliffaudio

I started with a Denon DL103 cartridge way back with a Well Tempered Record Player and the sound was so much more musical than my Sony cd player at that time.  I went to a Benz MC3.  Huge improvement.  Upgraded turntable to Well Tempered Classic. Small improvement.  Next was the Benz Ruby II.  Another small improvement.  Then Benz LP, and finally Benz LPS MR.  Huge improvement. Upgraded to the Well Tempered Reference Turntable.  Another small improvement.  Went from Audio Research SP9 II to Mare Connoisseur to Esoteric E-02 Phono preamp.  Incredible sound, beats my PS Audio Direct Stream Dac and Direct Stream Player.  Not even close.  Analog has that organic sound that digital cannot match.