Listening to my RP1 with headphones (distortion)

Try a different set of headphones or the headphones with another source to prove it's not them. I presume you have no speakers.

I would look at your cartridge alignment/tracking, so easy to get this wrong and would certainly cause the distortion you are experiencing.

Lost angeles, I have some bookshelf speakers which I tried. Hard to tell if the distortion was there as one speaker wasn't working properly. I'll seek out another pair of headphones and try that, good idea.

mitch65, thanks for the tips. By 'tracking' do you mean matching the tracking weight of the cartridge (in my case 1.75 with the Ortofon) with the slider on the turntable, moving that to 1.75 as well?

No idea how to check cartridge alignment but I guess I can find out online. Any recommended books on turntable set-up? it seems like quite a tech subject for a beginner and it would be good to do it properly. Thanks!

The slider should be about half the tracking weight, give or take. You should have had an alignment card with the turntable which goes over the spindle .

Hi mitch65,

Are you sure the slider should be half of the tracking weight? In the literature that accompanied the turntable, it says the slider should match the tracking weight. On my stock Ortofon cartridge the tracking weight is 1.75g, so slider should be 1.75 or 0.9?

Thanks!

Hi guys,

So I've done a bit more experimenting. Here's what I've found out:

80s pressing of Bowie Hunky Dory sounds great through my system, as does 80s pressing of Beatles Let It Be

A 1970s first pressing of Stones Exile On Main Street stereo and a 1970s first press Dylan Blond on Blonde mono I'm hearing some distortion.

I've noticed that these older pressings play louder than more recent stuff and cause some distortion

Could it be that the signal is too loud for the aux input on my integrated amp with these older records?

I've tried to pairs of headphones now and bookshelf speakers. I'm not quite 100% but I think I can report that there is distortion with all of them with the same offending 'louder mix' records.

Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I would second Mitch's point about using about 50% of the Rega recommended anti-skate in practice.  I've used much listening and a couple of test records, and both point to the standard setting being too much of a good thing.

If your distortion is more on the left channel than right, then that's definitely the cause - too much anti-skate.  If both channels distort the same, then look elsewhere (though it is highly unlikely to be an overloaded Aux input, as these are usually bomb-proof).