Quote:
Originally Posted by zeno
2 ways this can go. If the OEM cart was magnetic or ceramic cart.
1) ceramic has a high output. If you use it on a magnetic input stereo
it will blast you out if the room.
2) magnetics are very low output. Hook it to a ceramic input & you can
barely hear it at all.
SO the mag cart requires an extra amp stage that is NOT used for anything
else to work. BTW I have never seen a phono amp fail !
Try this. Unplug the audio cables from the turn table. Turn up the
stereo just a little & on phono. Touch the center pins & you should get
a loud hum. You are a free signal injector 
73 Zeno
LFOD ! |
The Original Cartridge was a Sony Branded Cartridge and I was assuming it was a Magnetic Cartridge because it looked just like a 1/2" mount Magnetic Cartridge the way it was built and the way it was mounted, but then I had an old Shure Cartridge that was a Magnetic Cartridge attached to the unit and it was working for a while (albeit without any audio out the right channel and lower volume out the left channel which to me sounded like the symptoms of a failing magnetic cartridge but then when I bought a replacement Magnetic Cartridge (an Audio Technica AT3600) and installed it there was no audio coming out of the speakers at all period not even with the volume turned up full blast (because even if it was meant to have a ceramic cartridge and I had a magnetic cartridge wired up to it, it still should of produced audio even at full blast but it wasn't even doing that.)
The original cartridge that this unit had equipped with it from the factory was a Sony VL-30G Cartridge which I'm pretty sure is a magnetic cartridge from what info I was able to find about it on the internet when I looked it up.
To answer your question, yes everything else on the stereo system works just fine independent of the record player (the tuner works flawlessly and has probably the most sensitive tuner I have heard on an older all-in-one unit) and the tape input works fine, just the phono mode doesn't work, when I touch the tonearm I get a loud hum out of the unit, but nothing when I actually touch the physical wires themselves that go from the cartridge to the RCA Jacks on the underside of the turntable, and nothing when I touch the individual RCA Cables when they are disconnected from the turntable.
So with that in mind, is it possible (even though its rare for it to happen) that the phono preamp stage did indeed die in this stereo system, like perhaps some capacitors may have failed causing an issue with the phono preamp stage of this stereo? It does have some of those old school Elna caps that are notorious for failing in it.