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Good article on stylus wear..

Eoin

Eoin

pfm Member
thevinylpress.com

The Finish Line for Your Phonograph Stylus… - The Vinyl Press

Examining the critical issue of phono stylus wear as it pertains to useful life and the potential for damage to records.
thevinylpress.com thevinylpress.com

Raises the question as to whether it might be better ‘overall’ to concentrate on cheaper cartridges and more regularly replace the stylus, or, get a retip on a MC more often. Versus to get a very high quality cartridge and hang onto it for 1000 hours or more.

Which might go against the received wisdom of aiming at a nice £500-1000 MC as a minimum.

I am wondering…

High mileage luxury vs bread and butter and keep a fresh tip..

Discuss!

Either way it’s a great article.
 
Great article, thank you for posting. I recently replaced my (modest) MC but I will be thinking about MM when this one wears out - which will be twice as quick as I expected based on the article!
 
I think it is important to keep track of mileage. I do this simply with a small note book and tally marks for each whole record I play. Each tally mark is approximately 40 minutes. If I waited until the sound is off, irreparable damage is likely to have started already.

I also generally choose carts with line-contact styli, irrespective of MC or MM flavours. They tend to be good for at least 1,000 hours, but ought to be checked every 300 hours or so.
 
I agree -well worth a read. I'd suggest this is one of the arguments for buying a new fresh outright cheap cartridge (The AT VM -95C is my favorite) -because stylus wear is so gradual it's hard to hear the difference as the tip wears down. But if you play a fresh AT-95C on a new unplayed record and then follow it up with your 200 hour used "deal" cart. Just play the inner groves -if the new AT-95C just plain sales thru it and your new 200 hr.deal spits -conclusion is obvious. This is basically a variation on what Hans Fantal suggested.
 
My AT-95ML is apparently good for 1,000 hours, which equates to roughly 1,500 album plays. I've been using a clicker counter, like this, to keep tally of plays, although perhaps it would be wise to think of 1,500 plays as a budget, not a target!
 
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My most expensive cartridge had been a Delos. It's now due for replacement and this article only hits home that the inflated expectation we need to spend ever increasing amounts (£1000's) to get a good sound more real.

From now on I'll probably be going for AT MC's between £450 and £700 and change them more regularly with a better phono stage. Takes away the anxiety of the cost of replacement.
 
I got my cartridge...used... with an Inspire Monarch TT (Ortofon Cadenza Bronze). It was almost new , less than 10 hours use. Last year, was looking for a replacement, auditioned several - none to my satisfaction. Chose to have it refurbed by Ortofon. Ortofon's refurb is a complete replacement of all the cartridge parts , ye get the original body back, everything else is new, but they do not admit that. Ye also get a letter from the engineer who did the refurb, with an explanation of what was done with the cart, also a projected lifespan -minimum 1200 hours with my particular cartridge. Cost me £800+...then, almost the cost of one third of a new one now... bargain ! :cool:
 
Regarding stylus wear: I have had this conversation about wear with several MC cartridge designers and manufacturers over the years, having imported a few cartridge makes. If you buy a good quality MM/MC cartridge, and by this I mean one that comes from a reputable manufacturer, then it will come with a good quality diamond stylus, so wear should be minimal over the years. Remember, a diamond is the hardest known material to man. My Transfiguration Proteus is 12 years old and is still performing beautifully, same with my ZYX 4D which is even older. Both have done 3000 hours plus. In my experience of over 40 years setting up turntables, tonearms and cartridges, 99% of problems occur as a result of the following:

1. Turntable, tonearm cartridge not set up correctly with the correct geometry, tracking force and bias. Even from supposedly reputable dealers.
2. Some tonearms lack the necessary basic adjustment for correct cartridge alignment.
3. Turntables not being level putting undue force on the cartridge.
4. Cartridge stylus not cleaned at all during its life.
5. Cartridge mass not compatible with the tonearm.
6. Owners records are not cleaned.
7. Owners records are scratched and damaged (often bought from boot fares/charity shops) thinking that this is all part of the vinyl ownership experience and is the norm. But these scratches and other damage can also damage your cartridge.
8. Owners rough with record queuing, dropping the stylus onto the record without using the queueing device.
9. Owners using a stylus cleaning solution which weakens the glue holding the diamond in place.

There are more but I will stop here, but you get the gist...

OK lets get to the nitty gritty with cartridge problems. It is not a worn stylus that is the main cause of cartridge degradation or failure. Most cartridge issues are dirt and dust getting up into the body of the generator and jam up around the cantilever causing a restriction in the cantilever movement. This causes a distorting sound that gives the impression that the stylus is worn and in most cases this is not the problem. This problem is mainly due to poor record management, as in no cleaning regime. A lot of cartridges that get sent back to the manufacturer just require a good clean and possibly a slight correction to the cantilever or cantilever suspension. Very few require a new diamond/stylus tip.
 
SONDEKNZ said:
How are others "checking" their styli?

I previously bought a USB microscope, and it was useless... 😂
Click to expand...

I can’t recommend buying a good quality vintage microscope highly enough. The cheap USB stuff is just junk, but £100 or less will get you a really nice old traditional lab or educational microscope from a top optical brand such as Olympus, Nikon, Zeiss or various very good USSR-era Russian brands.

I’ve ended up with two very nice Olympus scopes; a typical lab style compound and a lower power stereo model. They each highlight different things.

There is a thread here as a few of us have them now. The Shure stylus inspection microscope user guide is linked on the thread somewhere (I think it is in the OP link too, content from is certainly is). This is a very useful document as it tells you what to look for, which isn’t initially obvious. As with anything else you need to learn, and you do get better with practice. I agree with the article that some fancy tips are very hard to interpret unless you have a brand new stylus to hand to compare (which is what I did with my MP-500, I tend to buy one ahead). Looking at a typical conical or elliptical tip is pretty easy though and you will see wear as described. Good lighting is important, I find LED bike lights very useful here. Position them right and you will see the ‘cats eyes’ of wear the Shure documentation illustrates. The question becomes how much is acceptable to you?

Here’s the pfm thread:

pinkfishmedia.net

A microscope thread

By popular demand (I just sold one in the classifieds and several folk mentioned we should have one)! This is my 1960s Olympus K microscope. A lovely thing that I bought several years ago with a view to using it for stylus inspection. It is actually very similar to the one Shure used to...
pinkfishmedia.net pinkfishmedia.net
 
It looks like Shure have recently revamped their website and lost the link to the manual, but it is still available here on VinylEngine.

This document is the key to it IMHO.

Looking at the side of the stylus, as pretty much every eBay seller with a microscope does, tells you nothing other than there is a tip present on the cantilever and maybe how clean it is. That is all.

Looking at the stylus head-on can be more useful, and as I understand it this is how the BBC did things. This can show irregularities, ‘shouldering’ etc, and even the effect of bad bias or azimuth adjustment, but the stylus is almost certainly toast long by the time any of this is visible.

The best way to detect wear I’m aware of is exactly as Shure describe; effectively looking up at the stylus from the record playing surface perspective. With good lighting and sufficient magnification you can see the wear spots on the tip sides very clearly. If you have a new example of the stylus to hand for comparison this becomes very obvious.
 
GT said:
Regarding stylus wear: I have had this conversation about wear with several MC cartridge designers and manufacturers over the years, having imported a few cartridge makes. If you buy a good quality MM/MC cartridge, and by this I mean one that comes from a reputable manufacturer, then it will come with a good quality diamond stylus, so wear should be minimal over the years. Remember, a diamond is the hardest known material to man. My Transfiguration Proteus is 12 years old and is still performing beautifully, same with my ZYX 4D which is even older. Both have done 3000 hours plus. In my experience of over 40 years setting up turntables, tonearms and cartridges, 99% of problems occur as a result of the following:

1. Turntable, tonearm cartridge not set up correctly with the correct geometry, tracking force and bias. Even from supposedly reputable dealers.
2. Some tonearms lack the necessary basic adjustment for correct cartridge alignment.
3. Turntables not being level putting undue force on the cartridge.
4. Cartridge stylus not cleaned at all during its life.
5. Cartridge mass not compatible with the tonearm.
6. Owners records are not cleaned.
7. Owners records are scratched and damaged (often bought from boot fares/charity shops) thinking that this is all part of the vinyl ownership experience and is the norm. But these scratches and other damage can also damage your cartridge.
8. Owners rough with record queuing, dropping the stylus onto the record without using the queueing device.
9. Owners using a stylus cleaning solution which weakens the glue holding the diamond in place.

There are more but I will stop here, but you get the gist...

OK lets get to the nitty gritty with cartridge problems. It is not a worn stylus that is the main cause of cartridge degradation or failure. Most cartridge issues are dirt and dust getting up into the body of the generator and jam up around the cantilever causing a restriction in the cantilever movement. This causes a distorting sound that gives the impression that the stylus is worn and in most cases this is not the problem. This problem is mainly due to poor record management, as in no cleaning regime. A lot of cartridges that get sent back to the manufacturer just require a good clean and possibly a slight correction to the cantilever or cantilever suspension. Very few require a new diamond/stylus tip.
Click to expand...
9 of these bullet points don't apply to me in that case.

Agree about suspension adjustment but Jonathan Carr points out that whilst they can adjust it temporarily once it starts it's a downwards slope.
 
Tony L said:
It looks like Shure have recently revamped their website and lost the link to the manual, but it is still available here on VinylEngine.

This document is the key to it IMHO.

Looking at the side of the stylus, as pretty much every eBay seller with a microscope does, tells you nothing other than there is a tip present on the cantilever and maybe how clean it is. That is all.

Looking at the stylus head-on can be more useful, and as I understand it this is how the BBC did things. This can show irregularities, ‘shouldering’ etc, and even the effect of bad bias or azimuth adjustment, but the stylus is almost certainly toast long by the time any of this is visible.

The best way to detect wear I’m aware of is exactly as Shure describe; effectively looking up at the stylus from the record playing surface perspective. With good lighting and sufficient magnification you can see the wear spots on the tip sides very clearly. If you have a new example of the stylus to hand for comparison this becomes very obvious.
Click to expand...
Is there any guidance on "how much is acceptable to most people" so that you can go from there to "how much is acceptable to you?"
I can do this with bike chains, I'm an early changer and hope that changing them at the first wear point rather than waiting for the whole trans to be trashed will allow me to go through 3 or even 4 chains before a cassette is done. Is it worth it? Hopefully. But it's a judgement call, just as it is for a stylus.
 
stevec67 said:
Is there any guidance on "how much is acceptable to most people" so that you can go from there to "how much is acceptable to you?"
Click to expand...

I’m going with the Shure guide which gives three stages; new, slightly worn, badly worn. I’m certainly not running anything in the latter category, though I don’t think there is anything to fear from getting to ‘slightly worn’.

It is vastly harder to make a call with complex fine-line or shibata types. I’ve got an Ortofon 540/II with a fancy Fritz Geiger tip that I know is very low use as I’ve owned it from new, but it is not an easy thing to look at and understand using the Shure techniques. The article in the OP makes this point well. I’d be very confident looking at a DL-103, SPU etc, I’m confident with elliptical tips like my collection of vintage Shures, they look exactly as the Shure documentation suggests (but with vastly better clarity as the image through the microscope is massively better than the printed image). Complex stuff like the 540/II and MP-500 are far, far harder to assess IMO as the wear spots are nowhere near as visible.

Holding a spare stylus ahead is very useful so you can compare the current in-use one with a brand new one. Obviously not something one would do with a £4k MC, but well worth thinking about with a MM if it is a cart you like. It makes things vastly more easy, especially at the start of one’s learning curve.
 
It’s a good balanced piece of writing, a long read.

It raises some questions, whichever side of the fence you’d tend towards.

If you can’t find the time to go through the key points were:

Estimates of time varied widely between manufacturers. The time discrepancy seemed to be from whether ‘when is distortion building up’ (ie JICO) to ‘when are your records definitely being plowed up’

Jico consider ‘when is wear bringing the distortion to a level we wouldn’t deem acceptable on a new stylus’. This was not a high number at all..

It was in fact fairly easy to show and hear distortion building up at the high end (15khz) in inner grooves at surprisingly low hours.

Difficult to see the wear ears on the complex profiles.

Audible fistortion was coming in before the visible patterns were easily seen under a microscope.

Basically one way or another the diamond was getting past its best at well under 500 hours no matter which profile (but would certainly be usable, just not sounding quite as good). Unsafe to use at the 1000 ish hour point.

Now there’s no way it’s feasible to be calling time on mid/high end carts at 500 hours so it begs the question… it it better to be running £1000(+) units and accepting the tip may no longer be perfect at and beyond 500 hours + or is it better to be running a cheap unit and swapping the tip at (eg) 500 hours. ..
 
For me the priority is record wear. I have a very valuable record collection and obviously want to do no harm. What happens up at 15kHz is sadly none of my business anymore. To be honest out of a forum membership of 33,000 I’d be amazed if more than about 200 could hear 15kHz given the core age demographic. Most will be lucky to hear 10kHz. Just doing no damage is my priority.
 
Shure did some tests and figured out that under 1.5g the wear was reduced by roughly 20%.

There was another test done on the composition of debris in the record grooves (that can be cleaned) and incredibly the stated number was 35% of the dust was diamond powder.

I’m not sure if I personally buy that but there we are.
 
Agreed, I’m sure lower tracking weight and a good record cleaning machine extends life, but by how much I can’t be sure. Clean vinyl is a huge factor.

PS I’m currently using a vintage Shure V15/III VN35HE stylus that has very little discernible wear tracking at 1.15g in a very low-mass fixed shell 3009 and it seems very happy. I’ll monitor wear closely. I’d certainly expect say a DL-103 or M44-7 (conical tips at 2.5g) to wear through styluses a lot faster.
 
Eoin said:
thevinylpress.com

The Finish Line for Your Phonograph Stylus… - The Vinyl Press

Examining the critical issue of phono stylus wear as it pertains to useful life and the potential for damage to records.
thevinylpress.com thevinylpress.com

Discuss!

Either way it’s a great article.
Click to expand...

The thought I had was that it is easier to "hear a *change* than to then tell "which one is distorted". The point (pun alert) here is that some distortion may be the norm and 'sound better'. Devil in the details. There are a number of factors here.

One being that the modulation of the LP groove may not be perfect. Indeed, unlikely to be at HF and near end-of-side. IIRC some AES papers on this in the past.
 
Tony L said:
For me the priority is record wear. I have a very valuable record collection and obviously want to do no harm. What happens up at 15kHz is sadly none of my business anymore. To be honest out of a forum membership of 33,000 I’d be amazed if more than about 200 could hear 15kHz given the core age demographic. Most will be lucky to hear 10kHz. Just doing no damage is my priority.
Click to expand...
I can still hear the wine from a flyback but I absolutely no one my age who's remotely into hifi or even that it’s still a thing or ever was! Judging by the few hifi shows I’ve been to or definitely many I’ve watched on YT there doesn’t even appear to be many there in the early 40's.
 
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