Help with some weird distortion

[Binaural]

Hmm, that almost seems counterintuitive. The actual tonearm is so short on this particular setup.

Anyways i'm in the process of switching the tonearm to an all copper arm. It's weight is much more than the wood one i'm currently using. Hopefully this should bring some improvement.

As always I appreciate the help thus far.

[jonners]

The metal arm should be a much better match I would think. When your 103 is working happily I recommend removing its plastic body as described in this thread: Has anyone taken the body off a Denon DL103?
You'll be happy too!

[bgruhn]

WOW! What distortion!

The last time I heard distortion like that was signal breaking up in a vacuum tube amplifier with a leaking interstage coupling capacitor which placed DC on the grid of the next tube. That was a long time ago.

I suggest looking for problems in the amp or preamp. I listened to both the .wav and the .mp3 files just to make sure of what I was hearing.

Another possibility could be a damaged stylus or a gross accumulation of crud on the stylus or cantilever.

That is all I can think of for now. I do favor the electronics problem.

Bill

[Binaural]

Well, I have changed the tonearm to a pretty heavy copper tube and with this I've had to increase the couterweight to suit, so this should help also. It's amazing that 1 fish tank pump will float all this weight without breaking a sweat!

I have played back the record in question and a lot of the distortion out toward the sides has diminished greatly. I really think it's a damaged record at this point, as it is the worst track on the whole record. I also purchased some new records with some very difficult recordings for a cartridge to playback and i feel it did a great job. It's a vintage recording of some JS Bach concertos for harpsichord and orchestra. I'll post some samples of this after I give the records a good cleaning (goodwill specials $.49 each!!) and if you could give me some feedback on these i'd be really appreciative. I'll also post another track from that same Beatles album along with the track in question with the new arm for comparison. Thanks again for all the help!

[Binaural]

Well, just to humor myself, I changed the ratio of the step up transformers from 20:1 to 10:1 and increased the loading on the cartridge. This seemed to help a lot, although i got a hold of a dissecting microscope and had a look at the grooves of the particular tracks in question.

I guess I needed to keep in mind that these discs are over 40 years old. Compared to a relatively new record (yes i know the grooves can't be tit for tat, but I needed a control) and the grooves looked worn and distorted (hey, distorted grooves, distorted sound???) so I might have found the culprit.

I had no idea how much of a difference in the sound changing the loading resistors could make. As promised I'll post the song as it sounds now, just to get an idea of what I'm talking about.

[Binaural]

Ha! Forgot that (another word for breast) for tat would get censored. Bad Joe!

[Binaural]

Ok, here's the samples as promised.

Any feedback on the jazz track would be appreciated. I can't detect anything wrong, but I'm sure there are some keener/more experienced ears on here than mine.

http://www.abdclub.com/Audio/newsettings.wav

http://www.abdclub.com/Audio/newsettings.mp3

The above 2 links are for the original track with the new setup.

http://www.abdclub.com/Audio/yayjazz.wav

http://www.abdclub.com/Audio/yayjazz.mp3

The above 2 are the jazz song.

Thanks to everyone for their help. I really appreciate it.