hal (01/09/83)
I've been having problems with the needle on my turntable for the last
week. No one around Ithaca has ever seen anything like it, so I'm posting
this request for help.
The situation is as follows: I have a JVC belt drive turntable with an
Ortofon LM-15 cartridge. There is some sort of crud accumulating on the
tip of the stylus. It isn't dust and it doesn't appear to be shaved
vinyl. What it looks like is very small white or cream colored crystals
all over the tip of the stylus. When the stylus is crudded up like this
it won't stay in the groove of a record, which results in lots of distortion,
as would be expected. Fortunately, this doesn't seem to damage the records
permanently. After cleaning the stylus the records sound OK again.
The weird part is that it's very stubborn crud. The Discwasher stylus
cleaner doesn't remove it. It doesn't disolve in water, discwasher stylus
cleaner, or discwasher record cleaner fluid. It does disolve in isopropyl
alcohol, and I've been able to clean it off by using 99% alcohol and a Q-tip.
I don't have any real idea where the crud is coming from. This all started
suddenly a week ago. I thought it might be coming from one particular
record, but I haven't played that record since then and the problem still
appears regularly (every day or two). The crud could be shavings off the
records (not too likely since the needle is quite new and looks fine under
the microscope, and it is tracking at the recommended 1 1/2 g. with proper
antiskating). It could be some sort of evil dust, or maybe even vapors
from the turntable.
While I can clean up the stylus after the problem appears, I don't want
to have to put up with this forever (it isn't exactly normal behavior).
Can anyone out there figure out what the problem is? Have you ever heard
of something similar? Do you have any ideas what I can try next? Any help
would be greatly appreciated.
Hal Perkins
uucp: {vax135|decvax|...}!cornell!hal
arpa: hal@cornell