mikey@trsvax.UUCP (10/30/84)
There is a lot of discussion but no facts. What constitutes excessive wear of a stylus? The place where I bought my B&O MMC4000 said that I should look for excessive flat spots or cupping, then time for a new one. I'd like to know, what is considered acceptable wear, and at what point is it time to dig in the wallet? mikey at trsvax
herbie@watdcsu.UUCP (Herb Chong, Computing Services) (11/01/84)
Unless you have at least a 100 power microscope and a proper lighting
scheme, it is hard to tell if there is stylus wear. With a proper setup,
you are looking down along the vertical axis of the stylus and the lights
are perpendicular to that axis. You are looking for reflections that are
not thin straight lines but wide fuzz areas. Those are wear spots, usually.
Some stylus shapes have flat spots in them to begin with from the designed
shape, so you have to be familiar with the unworn stylus before you can
be sure what you are seeing is wear.
As for stylus life, it depends upon at least four things, your tracking force,
how clean your records are, what kind of music you play, and unforseen
accidents. Ignoring the the last, the first three usually have the most effect.
Tracking force should be at the recommended so that mistracking does not
cause record damage and yet record wear is not excessive. Clean records are
less abrasive than dirty ones and also are less likely to foul the stylus and
degrade sound reproduction. Music with lots of high frequency energy cause
greater wear in those passages because of the high forces generated. This last
one is the least significant effect and probably is important only after
about 1000 hours. Stylus shape also plays a part. The thinner the contact
surface in the front-to-back dimension, for the same maximum thickness,
the less wear is required to affect the effective front-back contact
thickness.
Herb...
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