Use the internet archive:
The wording has changed subtly over the last few years.
Perfect, thank you very much. (I figured that work was also a necessary evil, so avoided the archive)
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I feel a PhD. coming on.
The degradation mechanisms at work whilst playing PVC records.
Mine was holding up very well, right up until a friendās children decided to run my Aro arm top along the carpet playing ācarsā. The SPU Royal N still awaits a rebuildā¦
Maybe it could be tested with UG project student labour. An inert gas purge might help test for oxidative influence on wear, given enough time, and getting a student to spend most of their time listening to music shouldnāt prove too hard even these days. Iron contamination shouldnāt prove too difficult to check, albeit destructively. I can offer a few discs for that part somehow Iām in possession of a Max Bygraves record as well as the Sex Pistols third album, neither has any business occupying a turntable.
It wonāt work too well n your Rega anyway, now if you have something a bit more massive on your Gerrard than an Aro youād have something to aim for.
It works (worked?) rather well in the Aro with the heavy counterweight.
Yes it is important not to leave stylus in run out groove even overnight, the record will absorb the diamond dust because the groove walls are soft the dust then acts as grinding powder for the stylus.
There was a ring of vinyl dust on the record and that lead out groove is certainly noisier than before, not so sure about diamond fragments, there must be a point where a small enough diamond fragment isnāt a diamond anymore or all our records would turn into grinding discs.
The finer the dust is the more effective it is. The grey brownish dust around your stylus that was your record.
https://geology.com/minerals/mohs-hardness-scale.shtml
You could try and extrapolate various degrees of likely wear using Mohs scale of hardnessā¦ everything is measured relative to the hardness of diamond. In theory stylus wear should be very low. The analogy of a tool or knife example of a cutting edge is less relevant as the stylus is not cutting as such. However there will be some element of wear as contact is madeā¦
There must be some pretty weird alchemy going on if a diamond is getting turned into something else!
The whole idea of grooves having diamond dust slopping around in them sounds pretty implausible to me.
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I know at work, we used to buy , at some considerable cost, diamond guiding paste. The reason being that the diamond grinding did not themselves wear down and change the surface finish required. Other less hard and cheaper media would effectively grind against themselves, and get smaller, giving a different finish to that required.
Ex metallurgist here, and yes diamond paste provided me with many a happy hour polishing samples to a scratch less mirror finish just so that I could acid etch the softer components away for micro examination thus āspoilingā the mirror finish.
There are some strange peculiarities about cartridges which do not seem follow accepted science i see this in some of the posts. This has encouraged me to share an experience of my own which would have likely seen me tared and feathered.
I have a Linn Troika bought about time of release mid/late 1980s sited in a LP12 Ittok i also have a ORBE SME. and a Zieuss microscope but it is only capable of showing if the stylus is totally worn out, and yes deduction is a matter of skill its not just magnification.
The stylus is an elliptical likely a high quality Vital. I cant measure its use in hours just decades. The cartridge is 34yrs old usage time is 17yrs. I do not hear anything wrong with it!
" Of course you dont you fool you have just got used to the degradation" Obviously the suspension rubbers are perished long ago problem is it sits nicely above the record like new.
My only method of test seeing it sounds fine is to compare it with brand new cartridges the cheapest of these was a ATOC9 Mk 3 Line Contact the result of these comparisons is the Troika is in dam near every time clearly ahead in the fineness and delicacy of the treble and tends to have the superior harmonic construction the bass lives up to its reputation, the only thing i will say is the mid range presence is a touch light versus other cartridges and i dont know if this is original or not. These things hold true when the new cartridges are used in the ORBE SME also. I just do not know what to say about this as it is like the stylus has no wear how is that possible?
The dust does not slop around, significant heat occurs when the stylus traces the groove the diamond particles embed into the softened vinyl at point of contact.
No, but ācuttingā is only one way of creating wear. Rocks are also not cutting water, but abrasion and erosion are very real.
I agree as I said in the last sentence of my postā¦
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Reality with this post is that we donāt know, let alone able to agree on, the degradation mechanisms that require either maintenance or swap out.
The above is absolutely fundamental to any maintenance policy.
The is even some anecdotal evidence of minimal degradation over a number of years of use.
You need to be able to measure something to know it has fallen below the standard or wear limit ( if wear is your mechanism). Simply relying on how many times the item has been around the yellow thing in the sky is a poor indicator of maintenance being required ( unless that mechanism is itself directly related to time only- most mechanisms are environmental driven as well).
I agree generally, but the people who are in the best position to know are the manufacturers, and their large majority coalesces around the 1000 hour mark as the play time they feel comfortable with to say that it will be fine, but apparently some people have decided not to believe them.
Arguably, the manufacturers have to take less-than-perfect conditions into account in a general recommendation, and arguably they have an interest in selling new cartridges. So by all means, if someone plays only RCM-cleaned records and has the geometry perfect, they may well go higher towards Ortofonās previously stated 2000 hours.
So with a 1000 eur cartridge, 50 cent per hour. Hardly devastating, and letās be real, most people in this market segment are praying that the hours pass faster so that they can justify an upgrade
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