Do the more basic stylus shapes (conical and elliptical) cause records to get worn out quicker?

Just a few observations from experience with the 45's .. Not all 45's will play favorably on a conical. The more highly modulated (very loud) 45's tend to track badly on a conical, produce sibilance, and a lot of inner groove distortion. (from pinch effect) This is especially a problem with mono 45's in my experience. I've had much better results on a high compliance hyper-elliptical such as a Shure M-95, or a line contact.

Like McLover, I used to have (but not presently) a 0.6 mil conical on hand for playing worn records, some of them obtained a clean play, otherwise distorted and noisy (from wear) on the typical 0.2 x 0.7 elliptical.

It matters not if a record is a 7 inch 45 or a 12 inch 33, different styli will perform optimally according to the record. It comes down to mix n' match, trial and error. Generally an older mono record cut not too hot will play with lowered background noise on a 0.7 mil conical, and not go crazy with the sibilance. (less pinch effect on a more gently pitched groove) The conical can be less noisy, but the premium shapes track better. The 1.0 mil conical will be necessary on some records, such as the original Sun label.

Oh, and a mono switch lowers noise and helps control sibilance, but sometimes not entirely.

rock on,
Steve VK

 

Conicals wear to be opposite ellipticals and ellipticals wear to be conicals. Contact area of both elliptical and conicals are the same unless there is a true elliptical profile.

Record wear are related to the friction between record and stylus tip. A low friction means low wear. Friction depends on stylus quality and polish as well as dirt and hot grooves. Damagw occurs first in very hot grooves due to mistracking and increased friction.

So a well polished fine-line stylus wears less than a sloppy polished conical. But then there are excellent polished conicals such as DL103 and that except for stylus life shows very similar groove wear characteristics as the best fine line. That conicals wear more may thus be related to their relatively low lifetime and often high VTF (eg use of DJ cart).

 

I listen to a wider variety of records from a wider variety of eras, and sometimes have to deal with records rare enough that I rarely find nice copies of, My needs on styli and cartridges are very different from yours. What works for you, might only give me surface noise I don't want in the way of the music I want to hear.

 

When I use an elliptical on some 45 singles, I use a .3 x .7 mil or .4 x .7 mil, both tip sizes are good to own. Some really loudly cut singles benefit from this.

 

if its very rare, record it to cd. then i store the LP.

no more wear & tear on it.

record it without cleaning, straight rip, this way you still have some pops, and tiny bits of noise, sounds great on my stereo!

 

Never wore out a record yet and have no plans to in the future. Not in the realm of my concerns at the moment. A lot of bigger fish to fry first. Don't think I'll ever get to that tiny fish!

 

Still have to have the right stylus. Or have lots of noise I don't want with the music I'm trying to listen to. Exacerbated by too forensic styli. What plays your audiophile super discs ideally won't play my 1950's and 1960's R&B, Blues, Black Gospel, Rock, and Country 45 singles pressed sometimes on less than stellar surfaces, and that is sometimes when they're near mint as can be had. (sometimes well used copies the best which can be found). Many of which were not pressed in huge numbers to begin with.

Also, there's times where there's no LP available or even more modern quieter pressings from which to choose, or the LP is horrible reprocessed Stereo. Or many hundreds of times scarcer than the 45 I finally found. Also, quality declicking software, Workstation class PC hardware, proper audio cards aren't cheap. Not to mention the time involved. I do lots of transfers for clientele. I own the above. I suggest if you love a wide variety of records to have at least .7 mil conical, .3 x .7 mil elliptical, and a line contact handy for LP and 45 RPM duty. (a 2.5 or a 3 mil for 78 RPM discs) Sometimes one will play a record better than the other. Variety is useful.

I listen to every kind of record from 1930's broadcast transcriptions to 1948 mono LP and 1949 45 RPM discs to every kind of Stereo and Quad LP made to the latest super discs, this covers a huge variety of music. Straight rip for me is not always the proper way. I do things the professional way, the archivist way. Your scenario works well for more modern records, in nicer condition. Try playing back an old Chess, Gotham, Sun, or old Vee-Jay or other independent label less than well pressed 45 single like that in an original pressing, and a bit rough, and see how listenable it is to your ears with no cleaning, and a elliptical or Shibata, You won't likely finish it. Unless your ears are very tolerant of surface noise. I also can hear declicking abuse, and NR abuse, which is sometimes often why I must hunt down original pressings of what I like.

 

i have some old stuff from my parents, i clean them like crazy, use high pressure air to blow everything out of the grooves, and dry, than make a nice vinyl recording to my computer, and clean it up a bit with audio lab 3.0-

its nice!

 

Having at least one vintage Stanton 680 family cart and a handful of needles for it is pretty nice for this kind of work IME. My old original D74S is my last resort "ace in the hole" stylus. It will play through anything and almost always sounds amazing.

For casual use like mine the "light" version of Sony Soundforge is good enough (I've had the full version when I qualified for academic software pricing - that's how I got CD Architect 5.2) and my E-Mu 1212 prosumer studio grade sound card doesn't leave me wanting; but I have an inlking of the kind of stuff you're using there.

 

That light version of Sony Soundforge is all most of us need for general work, it's plenty fine. The Stanton 680/681 family is my favorite MI cartridge ever made, if genuine styli were easily had, I'd use little else, it's musical and versatile. And rugged enough for gimpy Stereophiles. PhilBiker, some great points. Sony CD Architect used with knowledge of it's options is the best CD authoring software for most all of us here. I use and love it. I usually have lower end AudioScience cards at home, work funds those.

 

Thorensman, I adore how your posts come across as Teutonic haiku! You are a poet, doncha knowit?

 

Surprised I never saw this thread.

The answer is yes. It wears your records and styli out faster, especially conical.

 

By faster, are we talking greatly accelerated? or just faster relative to a well aligned fine-line. No problem that you didn't see this thread earlier. I always appreciate the extra input.

Yeah.. thorensman is quite memorable and also really helpful... double bonus.

 

Well Im actually planning to do my own study of how an elliptical wears out a record over time but I dont think its much to worry about really. Ive seen other simple studies doing cirka 100 plays with no noticable degredation. Whats important is to have a properly set up player and if you have to choose between slightly too much tracking force vs slightly too little always go with the former. Its my understanding that what wears out records mostly is not simple friction between the stylus and grooves, but improper tracking and jitter of the stylus.

Speaking breifly about conical vs Elliptical the latter is generally preffered among vinyl enthusiasts because of its ability to better fit in the groove walls. At higher freqiencies the conical doesnt follow them correctly or doesnt fit. While the conical actually has more contact area with the grooves which is good because it reduces pressure, it doesnt overweigh the benefits of better tracking a elliptical introduces.

This is why more exotic profiles are optimal, because they introduce a slim fit reducing weight and geometrical problems as well as increase contact area, reducing pressure and wear overall.

 

I finally got a microscope and looked at my Sonotone 9TA-F that I run at about 2.5g. I expected to see lots of wear since I’ve racked up hours and hours on it and given the low end 50 hours to replacement interval. I couldn’t see any signs of damage or wear.

I wish it was easier to post pics here at SH.

 

+1

 

Dont solely judge the wear by visual inspection. No matter what cartridge you have there will be noticable wear after at least 500 hours.

 

Consensus used to be a clean record played with a good stylus should not experience any audible degradation during the first 200 plays. If I owned only say 2-3 records I might worry about this. Thankfully I own enough of them as to never play the same one 200 times in a lifetime. AND.....there are always CDs for those who worry

 

You get tired of an album after a while too so yeah.

 

All my rare records, I have made a nice cd-r copy. I cleaned up the lp the best I could and recorded it through audio lab 3.0. To a cd-r.

I don’t worry about playing my lps too much any more. It’s nice the cd-r’s keep some of the tiny ticks
, pops, very small sounds of the vinyl, so when I play the cd-r, it IS the sound of the record playing.
I love that. !,!

 

People sometimes wonder why a CD rip from a record still sometimes sounds better than the digital retail release when they are both digital. The answer is simple, the production steps for the record such as mixing, mastering and cutting make it preferred. The medium its played back on is almost irrelevant to me.

 

Why would you prefer to listen to a CD-R transfer when you can listen to the original ? For fearing of wearing it out ?

 

To be honest, I’m lazy. It’s easier to play the cd.

 

I'll combine the themes laid down in this thread with the end of Shure phono. As new Shure products rapidly disappear from the marketplace, I found myself ordering not one, but two SC35C carts last week. The rush on Shure stuff, combined with perusing some old threads about the virtues of the SC35C's sound and versatility, especially when freed of its plastic mounting block, made it irresistible for me. It tracks at 4-5g, which I'll try on my Marantz TT-15 and Fluance RT81. I also ordered a light tracking conical from TVOM, but I really want to give the heavy-tracking OEM stylus a try. I've acquired hundreds of used records from the 1950s-1990s and have been mostly surprised how good they sound. In many instances, I have no doubt that previous owners were ploughing through these records with heavy tracking and unkind styli, yet here they are sounding wonderful to me.

I'm looking forward to trying out a heavy tracking conical, even though I don't have a massive tonearm to try it on. I'm hoping for Wow, but will happily settle for competent just to know I own some of the very last new Shure products. I feel as though it's almost obligatory to try these old-design conicals, the SC35Cs, the Denon 103s, the SPUs (for those with $$$), etc. I'm excited to try.

 

That is an over-exaggerated claim. Lou Dorren, who helped develop the CD-4 system, did a test of playing a CD-4 record 500 times with a ceramic cartridge and conical stylus tracking at 4.5 grams. Afterwards the first play with a Shibata-equipped CD-4 system produced only a lot of noise, but not from damage to the grooves -- it was from the dirt that was ground into them, which the Shibata stylus happened to be very good at literally plowing out of the grooves. So after the "cleaning play", he played it again and this time the CD-4 subcarrier decoded perfectly.

He tells the story here, including microscope photographs of the grooves:

http://www.amstereo.org/files/cd-4paper4.pdf