Turntable headscratcher: bass-heavy PS-X600 (solved: MM vs MC)

[dst]

After a long and careful (ie. obsessive) browsing of the forums, I ended up buying a Sony PS-X600 turntable off eBay. Inserted a VM502EB cartridge and hooked it up to
Fosi Audio Box X5 Phono Preamp, both of which I'd used with my previous turntable.

So imagine my surprise when the sound was extremely bass-heavy. Now, it could be VTA issue, but there's no VTA adjustment on the PS-X600. As a quick kluge, I tried removing the mat and thus changing the angle, but it didn't change the sound that much.

Any learned ideas as to what could be wrong here? I'll borrow a known working turntable from a friend this weekend and what it sounds like, but if you've any good guesses re: PS-X600 issues, I'd love to hear them!

 

[Dimitri]

Have you made extra-super-sure-for-certain there is no dust blob covering the tip and it's intact?
Or if you removed the tip during the tranfer it was not inserted all the way ?

 

[raindance]

That symptom sounds like you have an MM cartridge and your preamp is incorrectly set to MC.

 

[dst]

That symptom sounds like you have an MM cartridge and your preamp is incorrectly set to MC.

Bingo! I must've flipped the switch on the Fosi at some point and didn't realize it, because the one time I did try switching it on purpose, I heard a loud burst of noise and my amp shut down. But now I went to take a second look and indeed it was set to MC.

Buncha googling and messing about with LLMs didn't help me, ASR did!

I edited the topic in case this helps some other poor sod out there.

 

[raindance]

Bingo! I must've flipped the switch on the Fosi at some point and didn't realize it, because the one time I did try switching it on purpose, I heard a loud burst of noise and my amp shut down. But now I went to take a second look and indeed it was set to MC.

Buncha googling and messing about with LLMs didn't help me, ASR did!

I edited the topic in case this help some other poor sod out there.

Guess how I knew?

 

[Multicore]

Buncha googling and messing about with LLMs didn't help me, ASR did!

And in less than an hour too.

ASR FTW

 

[dst]

And in less than an hour too.

ASR FTW

Exactly! I was still putting my kids to sleep while the first reply appeared… so now I'm carefully spinning just a few records after their bedtime. At a very reasonable volume, natch.

 

[raindance]

Exactly! I was still putting my kids to sleep while the first reply appeared… so now I'm carefully spinning just a few records after their bedtime. At a very reasonable volume, natch.

Veils have been lifted!!!

 

[Laika2]

Play with the 2 lowest gain settings for MM, I found the lowest led to no bass on my ortofon Black 250,second to lowest gain and everything opened up a bass was back in spades.