On Tue, 02 Sep 2003 02:04:23 GMT, David Goodwin
wrote:

My old cartridge had a problem with raised noise levels in the right
channel...

As others have said, imbalance in distortion levels between channels
is usually due to incorrect anti-skating setting. Or possibly a
cartridge that is not perpendicular to the record surface.

thing is, I didn't use the cartridge for long, so I don't
think I could've damaged any vinyl in the interim.

Unfortunately this isn't so. Playing a vinyl record with a badly
mistracking turntable JUST ONCE can cause permanent damage.

I had a listen to your highfrequency MP3, and it sounds to me like one
of: (a) mistracking, (b) faithful playback of a record previously
damaged by mistracking, or (c) a record which just has pretty nasty
distortion pressed in.

You need to get your turntable properly aligned right now. Stop
playing records with it until you know it's correctly adjusted,
otherwise you are in danger of causing more damage. Once it is set up
properly, you can then hope that the distortion you have been hearing
is of type (a), and that you haven't caused too much damage.

If the distortion is of type (b) or (c), the bad news is that I don't
know of any way to successfully remove this type of distortion. The
only methods I've tried that had partial success a (i) a savage low
pass filter to remove the high frequencies (where most mistracking
distortion has its major components) plus a lift in the midrange to
compensate; (ii) some audio restoration programs' decrackling can help
in some cases.