The application of inhomogeneous or miscalibrated refocusing pulses to coupled spin systems leads to erroneous spin-echo spectra. There are 2 distinct sources of errors: the imperfect refocusing of the obsd. magnetization and the imperfect spin inversion of the coupling partners. In 2-dimensional spin-echo spectroscopy, these errors lead to addnl. signals that should be identified as artifacts to avoid misinterpretations. [on SciFinder (R)]