my haunted stereo

Need some expertise with this problem

Hi. New here and hoping to find some help for a problem thats been driving me crazy. I have a stereo that as I listem to my vinyl records will eventually cut out the sound from one of the speakers. It consists of a Pioneer P-120 turntable and a Sony amp and a Sony 5-disc CD player plus a tape deck which I rarely use and a pair of Sony speakers. What happens is that when I play records, everything sounds great but inevitably one channel will cut out and I will only get sound from one speaker. I assumed it was the turntable's fault so I would unplug the turntable, screw around with the plugs and plug them back in and this would almost always work. OK, bad wiring on the turntable right? Then I discovered that if I left the turntable running and shut down the amp, turned it back on and switched the input to the cd player or tape player and then back to the turntable, the sound would be fine again. I never have this problem unless I am listening to records. I can play CD's all day long with no problems. It's almost like the amp is shutting down one channel to protect itself from an overload or something. This is absolutely driving me crazy. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance

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2 comments

Re: my haunted stereo

ronman Posted Jun 05, 2006

Yes I used to switch them around and the problem alwys switched as well. It was always the right channel (plug). Now however, it is the left side that is regularly disappearing.

Re: my haunted stereo

Kurt vonSternberg Posted Jun 04, 2006

Hello, Yes, I have an idea what it is: one of 2 things---either one channel of the phono "pre-amp" stage is intermittent (possibly bad capacitor or solder joint) OR you have an intermittent /dirty input selector switch (the one that decides the input from tuner,aux/cd/tape/phono,etc) (assuming it is not the turntable) Buy a good quality contact cleaner and open up the unit and spray the switch in question. Check the area around the phono pre-amp stage and input jacks for bad solder joints and / or bad connections. I've been in the electronics service trade (audio in particular) for over 40 yrs. and am sure one of these will remedy the problem. It is NOT "anything" to do with protection whatsoever. Good Luck!---Kurt PS: have you tried swapping phono cables left to right--right to left to see if the problem "stays" with the same channel??

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