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RE: Sibilance through left channel

Posted by John Elison (A) on November 26, 2019 at 16:23:54

In Reply to: Sibilance through left channel posted by dandaroy on November 26, 2019 at 15:20:32:

Hi Dandaroy,

I'm assuming you used a scale to measure VTF when you said you checked VTF. When you measure VTF you always need to disconnect antiskating for the measurement. If you didn't disconnect antiskating for the VTF measurement, do it again with antiskating disconnected and then reconnect antiskating after setting VTF correctly.

The inner groove wall contains the left channel information and the outer groove wall contains the right channel. Assuming you have the channels connected correctly, increasing antiskating will cause the right channel to play more accurately and reducing antiskating will cause the left channel to play more accurately. Try disconnecting antiskating completely and see if you still get distorted sibilance on the left channel. If that corrects the problem it means you had too much antiskating. If nothing changes, reconnect antiskating at either the minimum or medium level, but not the highest level. It's obviously not an antiskating problem.

A worn or damaged stylus can cause a sibilance problem so you might want to check the stylus under a microscope if possible. Another thing that can cause a sibilance problem is a damaged cantilever. Do you think you might have damaged the cantilever by brushing it incorrectly? Brushing the stylus from back-to-front should not damage the cantilever, but if you accidentally brushed it incorrectly it might have cracked the cantilever. You might want to replace the stylus/cantilever assembly and see if that eliminates the problem.

Also, check to make sure the tonearm is not touching the arm-lift mechanism when playing a record. That could cause left channel sibilance if the arm was just barely touching the lifter very lightly.

If none of these things correct the problem, it might be in the phono stage.

Good luck,
John Elison

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