How do you clean a stylus safely?

x2—where does the crud go? Is it gel, so you get some sort of capillary action pulling the gunk off the stylus? Does fuzz get cacked up in the gel? ZeroDust mind want to know.

 

I just gently rub over the debris under very lukewarm water and turn it upside down to dry for a few minutes. I do shake off the excess water first though. I do not remove it from it's enclosure.

 

I have both the Zerodust and the Vinyl Passion Dustbuster. The Zerodust has a softer consistency and larger surface area compared to the VP. I'm not sure which one I prefer at this point, but it seemed like after a year of use and the occasional rinse, the VP was become a little less effective, so I ordered the Zerodust to replace it. I would imagine the Zerodust does a better job of cleaning some (but not all) of the debris from the cantilever. I think you need to be careful with both. I don't like the method were people touch the clean to the stylus. Carefully lowering the stylus into the cleaner using the cue lever/button seems like a much safer approach.

 

It's easier to pull it off successfully with the Zerodust then a magic eraser as the former gives way to virtually any pressure, but I definitely feel like a terrible person the rare times I do it. My problem is by the time I think to clean the stylus I already have the next record on the deck, or don't really have any place to put the record in between sides if I want to clean, etc.

 

OK, cool. I just picked a vendor at random to have a product description link. Thanks for suggesting a better price option.

 

Another Zerodust user here.

 

I use my LAST after every side of a record. I admit though, I have no scientific way to verify that it actually is clean. Do I need to do more than that?

 

A question for the zerodust users: where do you place it on your turntable? I have a Nottingham Spacedeck, which has no plinth near enough to the platter level to allow me to place a zerodust.

 

I use a small brush that came with my ortofon cart. Brush back to front after every side. Wet clean using a dilute alcohol solution every 100 sides or so. Too much wet cleaning with a brush can result in the cleaning fluid finding its way into the delicate cantilever mechanism.

 

Discwasher brush since the seventies. Sometimes dry, sometimes with a drop of Torumat record cleaning fluid. Works for me.

 

I place it right on the platter and clean the stylus before placing the vinyl disc for playback.

 

Same here when I had my NA Horizon. I slide a small rubber stopper between the platter and plinth to prevent it from moving.

 

So with these protractors, you have to orient to the center of the pivot. Is this variously more difficult with some arms? It seems that a very tiny misalignment would throw it all off.

 

Wrong topic.

 

Friday Night

 

I stab mine into a kneadable eraser.

 

Zerodust

 

No matter how well-meaning, do not let your cleaning lady wipe the stylus with her dust rag. At least that is what I think happened after the stylus went missing.

 

There is no way my stylus would clear my Zerdust sitting on the platter on my Avid.

I made a platform to raise the cleaner to sit between the platter and the tonearm's rest. Placing it and removing it between cleanings. I would show you a picture, but it's so ugly it's embarrassing. I made it out of a block of styrofoam.

 

Just ordered zerodust from ebay cost me $34.38 Looks like a good way to go. Here's a 400x shot. We'll see how well it works next week.

 

this is after zerodust looks defective to me.


print screen windows xp

 

Magic Eraser. It does everything that the zerodust can do (and better IMO) at 1/50th the cost.

 

I've been using Zerodust for years

 

Zerodust between each side and a stylus cleaning solution with at tiny brush once a week or so. (look's like a fingernail polish bottle, I forget the brand)

 

That was from several dips in zerodust. Those strands look like fine wire used to bind the tip onto the cantilever. The more I dipped it the dark shaded gunk started to come of and it seemed to pull those strands down with it.


This whole experience has blown my mind. I have been believing that I was doing a very good job cleaning my records. I scrub them in a spin clean and the taking while wet to a Kab EV-1 RCM vacuum rinse and vacuumed again. Every record gets clean new and used. This is totally not visible to the naked eye. I have other images in my effort to get to the 92 deg SRA. Image at 20x you cant see it even at 200x I couldn’t see this. Not until I figured out how to focus the usb microscope at 400x did this come into view. So anyone not looking at their needle under some kind of microscope has no idea what kind of shape their stylus is in. For all I know this has been like this ever since I bought it 14 months ago, mind you 2 months out of warranty.


The important thing is I figure this out on a cartridge that cost $350. I can see that I need to do a much better job cleaning the stylus and it has to be looked at periodically and definitely when it’s new and a month before the warranty is out.