I think they just accidentally dropped a zero. 1500-2000 would fall into the same range as other makers. It seems to be old too, I found the quote in a not-so-recent discussion on another board, where people took it seriously. Then looked it up and it was still there.
Maybe with Koetsu we’d get free replacements like Rolls-Royce used to. (Possibly apocryphal story: in the glorious past, the axle on a customer’s RR broke. Was replaced but he never received a bill. When he inquired, got the answer that axles don’t break on RRs, so they don’t know what he meant)
I knew styli wear out. But I hadn’t really considered it as something that might be measured in dollars per listen. It’s getting a little out of hand if the cost of simply listening to a record is equivalent to a coffee from the local café. Another cost I’m going to have to find a way to slip under the radar!
My Uniti Core got similar RR treatment from Naim. I sent it in when it wasn’t ejecting the disc after ripping, and not always succeeding to rip. There was also something rattling around inside. I came back with a note to say they could find nothing wrong with it. I no longer rattled however and has ripped normally ever since including ejecting the disc at the end.
Yes some knowledgeable advice there - i spellbound to know who makes the rest for completeness. I confess to little Linn knowledge having abandoned interest in the brand
at the time of the Circus / Trampoline modifications.
Slightly off topic, but talking of razor blades…….if you clean the blade with your thumb (in the right direction) each time you use it, then you will treble the life of the blade. As in its not the steel blade that is dulling, but the build up of miniscule crap on the blade that impairs its cutting ability. I think this could also be a factor on the cartridge needle itself.
Another tip is to use alcohol after cleaning it to ensures it dries fast (rust is also another accelerant of a blade’s end). They still dull after so many uses, though.
Certainly a part in cartridge life - dirty records will accelerate the process for sure.
I’m surprised it hasn’t been mentioned that over on the Vinyl Engine forum the is an in-depth thread with microscope images by a forum member of stylus types and a study on wear. Could be worth a search if anyone is interested. The closeup photos are amazing.
With this in mind - please do not post “live” links to commercial hi-fi or other commercial websites and please do not link or make any reference to discussions posted on other forums
I interpreted that as referring to the commercial bit, but agree it’s a bit ambiguous. @Richard.Dane could you clarify whether a link to a generic discussion on another forum as described by @nitrous would be allowed?
I agree that in the “commercial” context it is ambiguous, but it does say “any reference”, and I recently had a link deleted that I naively posted further up, just another forum discussion with stylus pics as far as I can tell.
This is actually partly right and partly wrong. Dressing the blade with thumb is right not so the build up or to a stylus unless it is badly neglected. Sometime ago you could buy a little Pyramid to put your razor blades in overnight or so, the Magick position was 2/3 up from the base and the mystic would sharpen them and guess what when tested they were in fact sharper! Further analyses revealed that under use the edge of the blade curled over and that the metal had a memory and given some time would revert to its sharpened position.
I have seen a large selection of posted stylus wear photos by amateurs of which you need to go look for. In all cases the image clarity is poor or magnification is a long way short of what is required but far the most problem is they do not focus on the exact areas which require examination so totally no insight can be drawn from them. I certainly will not be bothering with non scientific photos again.
@66richard yes agreed, I even tried using a USB microscope when they started to appear for reasonable money and at 200x with reasonable image quality it was good fun but useless for anything else. However, clearly there are some clever and persistent people out there and some have managed to ‘stack’ images from high power microscopes of the wear surface in a way that the eye would see when viewing directly. Of course you then need the knowledge to know what to look for…
Still a fascinating subject.
Me I stick to 1000 hrs on cleaned records and change cartridge!
