Based on discussions in various threads on multiple audio forums, the lifetime in wear hours of a phonograph stylus remains an open and frequently debated question. Manufacturer’s claims for example range from a few hundred hours for conical styli, up to 500 hours for elliptical styli, and into the thousands of hours for more advanced shapes. We have even read claims for certain stylus shapes lasting up to 20,000 hours. The problem, however, is that manufacturers don’t provide contemporary research or data to support these longer life claims. To add to consumer confusion, a review of select manufacturer’s owners’ manuals from the early 1980s onward reveal a dramatic change in much longer stated wear hours along with less specificity and greater ambiguity in their statements. That period coincided with compact discs (CD) displacing vinyl records, a trend that has only recently reversed, with vinyl now eclipsing CD sales. In one pertinent recent example, Ortofon moved from stating “up to 2,000 hours” in stylus wear to “Ortofon recommends replacing your stylus after no more than 1,000 hours to preserve the life of your records” in the June 2023 issue of Stereophile. This recognition of more believable stylus wear lifetimes is welcomed, but without support these claims are assumed to be marketing numbers, even if well intended. What is needed to support any claim on stylus life is an experimental framework used to gather data across a range of stylus shapes and VTF conditions. Ideally this work would come from the industry, updated to include a full range of stylus shapes, including newer advanced stylus shapes that simulate the cutting head used in making record stampers. Unfortunately this work is not available to consumers and that fact has created significant confusion. Determining how long a diamond stylus lasts regardless of its shape is like asking how long is a piece of string with multiple answers offered for the same stylus shape. A first attempt to address this question was made by SHF member @Ray Parkhurst (Note, aka Vinyl Engine [VE] member @ray_parkhurst) in his Stylus Wear Study recorded on the Vinyl Engine website (http://www.vinylengine.com/turntable_fo ... 9&t=113013). Unfortunately, his results were not widely accepted due to the nature of test conditions. That experiment used a linear-tracking turntable, a low VTF cartridge, and repeated play of a single side of a vinyl record for the duration of the test, 1,000 hours. This procedure was deemed too different from normal use by a majority of observers. A proposed more mainstream set of conditions would be as follows: - Standard but good quality turntable with dust cover - Alignment and anti-skating per manufacturer - Standard mount cartridge - Elliptical stylus - Typical / moderate VTF - Play multiple LPs in VG+ or better used condition - Records cleaned with widely accepted methods - Stylus cleaned and alignment checked periodically - Typical household environmental conditions VE member @BMRR has volunteered to run the experiment as outlined above. He will use a very good quality Sanyo Q50 turntable (TT) as seen here https://www.vinylengine.com/library/san ... .shtml.The TT will be fitted with a new Audio Technica VM95E cartridge. This cartridge has a bonded 0.3 x 0.7 mil elliptical diamond with recommended VTF of 2 grams, which is representative of those used in a wide variety of today's most popular moving magnet (MM) and moving coil (MC) cartridges at many different price points. Examples are the Ortofon 2M Red (MM, $100), Clearaudio Concept V2 (MM, $250), Rega Elys 2 (MM, $350), Ortofon Quintet Red (MC, $400), Hana EL (MC, $475), and Sumiko Songbird (MC, $900). The 2 gram tracking force of the VMN95E is also highly representative: the six cartridges listed above have tracking forces ranging from 1.75 grams (Rega Elys 2) to 2.3 grams (Ortofon Quintet Red), with an average of 2.0 grams. Therefore, we believe that an elliptical stylus tracking at 2 grams represents the most common scenario among today's vinyl enthusiasts. The cartridge will be secured very tightly to the headshell to prevent any movement. Additionally, one of the unique features of Audio-Technica MM cartridges is that their styli are inserted upward into the belly of the cartridge and lock securely in place with an audible "click." This eliminates any possibility of forward/backward or side-to-side movement of the stylus. To be absolutely sure, @BMRR will check the alignment at each read point to verify nothing has changed. To make the test practical, each record side will be played for ~12hrs with the TT on automatic repeat. Then the record will be flipped, the stylus cleaned, and the other side played for ~12hrs. This routine will be repeated with a fresh record each day until the conclusion of the test. The stylus will be removed at pre-determined playing time intervals and sent to @ray_parkhurst for photomacrographic imaging. This analytical process will be conducted at 0hrs (i.e., the new stylus), 48hrs, 96hrs, 240hrs, 360hrs, and 480hrs, with timing adjusted based on observations. A further test point after 480hrs would be added if necessary. SHF member @BendBound (Note: aka VE member @Tetonbound) will supply records for this experiment. Twenty (20) records at least will be employed in predominately VG++ to NM condition. These records are cleaned in an 80 kHz ultrasonic (US) tank (made by Vibrato) for 20 minutes, rotating on a Vinyl Stack spindle assembly. The set up will include circulating cleaning solution through a Neo•Pure PH-27097-S35 water filter, to 0.35 microns. To ensure good US cleaning, only two records at a time are processed. The solution is a laboratory grade triple distilled water, Ilfotol surfactant (wetting agent) and isopropyl alcohol (~99%) in a process and chemical proportions adapted from Neil Antin (PRECISION AQUEOUS CLEANING OF: VINYL RECORDS, 3rd Edition, January 2022, see this link: Precision Aqueous Cleaning of Vinyl Records-3rd Edition - The Vinyl Press on Bill Hart's The Vinyl Press). Then after the US cleaning, all records are vacuumed on a VPI17 using AIVS Formula No.6 record cleaning solution, rinsed using ultra-pure water, and revacuumed until visibly dry. All records are then further dried in warm air from a SIMCO Ionizing Aerostat machine to eliminate static charge on the vinyl. All cleaned records are re-sleeved in Diskeeper™ sleeves, made by Sleeve City. To provide additional data on the sonic impact of record wear, two records will be recorded by @BendBound before the experiment using a Tascam DA-3000 pro-level recorder at 96kHz and 24 bit. These recordings will be done on near mint records to establish a baseline of sonic quality of selected records. At the end of the experiment the same two records will be re-recorded at the exact same recording levels to evaluate sonic degradation and high frequency loss, if any. One record will be the first played in the experiment, and the second the last played, so that data will be available for examine record wear from the stylus in both it’s new and worn conditions. This experiment is designed to establish an acceptable baseline for stylus wear for one stylus shape at a specific VTF. We envision follow-up experiments to gather data on other stylus types and/or under different VTF conditions. Our goal is to provide guidance on stylus wear supported by a rigorous process with photomacrographic images, and on expected degradation of the sonic qualities of the vinyl, if any. Since @ray_parkhurst and @BMRR live on extreme opposite sides of the U.S., the VMN95E stylus will rack up quite a few frequent flyer miles for this experiment, pushing the expected total elapsed time for this experiment to be ~3 months, but images taken at each read point will be published so the community can follow along with the experiment. A final report is planned once the test and analysis is completed. If there are any others who would be willing to volunteer to do a similar experiment with a different stylus type, or to contribute financially to support this and follow-on experiments, please reply to this thread or by PM on Vinyl Engine to either @BMRR, @ray_parkhurst, or on the SFH @BendBound.
Please see this thread on Vinyl Engine for this Stylus Wear Study 2. Stylus Wear Study 2 - Page 2- Vinyl Engine SHF @Ray Parkhust has posted his set up for evaluating stylus tip wear and provided examples of wear on a conical or elliptical stylus tip. In another VE thread as seen here: Stylus Evaluation Imaging- Vinyl Engine @Ray Parkhurst demonstrated his skills in photomacrophaghic representation of stylus tips and in gauging degree of wear. This includes all shapes of stylus tips, especially advanced tip shapes. I would direct you to page 76 in the second link (directly above) where he imaged my worn Replicant 100 stylus on an Ortofon A-95 cartridge. Please read through the discussion of the wear on this Replicant 100 since Orofon technical engineers in Denmark estimated the number of wear hours on this advanced tip shape, and Expert Stylus & Cartridge Company (think Mr. Wyndham Hodgson's UK firm) also provided a written description of its wear. See this link that details Expert Stylus & Cartridge Company: Wyndham Hodgson, Expert Stylus & Cartridge Company | Surrey, Ashtead Consumer Electronics reviews This SFH tread will be updated with periodic progress reports separate from those on Vinyl Engine for the duration this test. The information in both treads will be complete, while we expect the feedback and discussion on both threads to develop a life on their own merits.
Very curious to see the results of this experiment. This year I have replaced two styluses: the original one on the AT440MLa, at circa 520 hours in 9 years, and the original one on the 2M Black... at circa 430 hours again in 9 years. Both had reached a point where distortion on inner grooves in loud orchestral passages was inacceptable to my ears (screeching spots of mistracking on trumpets and violins), and it was not a matter of dirt/crud on the needle (tried various dry and wet cleaning methods before kissing them goodbye). I replaced them on the same cartridge bodies, without changing alignment at all, and the distortion disappeared: so yes, they were worn. And yes, I no longer believe the "it will be fine for 1000 hours" myth. I must of course admit that I played some not perfectly clean records (and some very dirty ones too) with these needles for a few months before finally buying a washing machine, so I guess that also must be taken into account to judge the premature wear. But still, I will keep my ears open from now on when approaching the 500 hours mark. Too bad that I have discovered Ray's microscope experiments after throwing them away: the next one to wear out (a Nagaoka MP-500 which has now 360 hours and still going strong), I will send it to him for the benefit of science.
I applaud your tenacity and determination. I am very impressed. It appears you and your team have put in many hours designing this experiment and I'm looking forward to the periodic reports and the final results. My hope is that it will provide very meaningful information. In additiin, I believe you have picked a very good cart/stylys for your procedures. The 95e is possibly the most used cart/stylus in audio. I am not familiar with the TT, but it seems your team has done a good bit of research on making all of your choices. Thank all of you for your work up to date and that which is forthcoming. Good luck.
Based on the results of Ray Parkhurst's original stylus wear study, it appears that 1,000 hours may in fact be possible under the most ideal of conditions — conditions that include, most importantly, a VTF of no more than 1.25 grams. But that's also why some people didn't accept the results of his first test: there were comments about 1.25 grams being an uncommon/unrealistic VTF in this day and age. A lot of the published wear estimates are from the days when high compliance / low VTF cartridges were all the rage and the manufacturers were all competing to see who could go the lowest... and the wear estimates "stuck" even though the vast majority of today's cartridges/styli operate at higher VTFs. That's one of the main reasons why we're doing a new test, using a stylus that tracks at 2 grams. We want to find out if VTF is as big a factor as many of us suspect it is, and come up with new science-proven wear estimates that can be applied to today's most popular cartridges/styli. Thank you. The VM95E is indeed very popular, and its bonded elliptical diamond and middle of the road VTF make it a good stand-in for many other cartridges that are in common use today. Regarding the turntable, the main reason we chose it is because I already own it and because it has an automatic repeat mode. Auto Repeat will make the experiment move along much more quickly than if one of us had to sit next to the turntable all day and hit the start button over and over again. And it'll run all night while I'm asleep, too. Auto Repeat was what made Ray's original stylus wear study so efficient, but his turntable is a P-Mount linear tracker, so we wanted the new study to have a more conventional turntable — standard pivoting tonearm, standard-mount cartridge — to help make the results more representative of the turntables and cartridges most commonly used today.
I usually stick to the middle of the manufacturer's recommended range, so at 1.65-1.75. Never been obsessive on tracking as light as possible.
Nice to see another valuable test in the works, very much needed and appreciated. I would've much preferred it be done with a more advanced stylus, I think that would've been more valuable to the audiophile community, not many of us care about bonded ellipticals, but any new results are welcome, and at under $50 per stylus it does keep the cost lower Thanks for the news and future updates!
By knowing which record you played and how long you played it (minus the time for the auto mechanism to work between plays)
These next two photos are proof that I have the kit to do it what is described earlier using ultrasonic cleaning and VPI17 vacuum finishing. I also use a SIMCO Aerostat to knock down static, and a simple internet search will show you what those look like. Once cleaned, the records are put into a new Diskkeeper™, from Sleeve City. Now I want to discuss the records involved in this experiment. The stylus wear experiment (2) will use 20 records for this test. The condition of the records is as follows: Twenty (20) records: 1 VG 2 VG+ 4 VG++ 9 NM- 3 NM 1 M, Sealed We want a realistic set of records in mostly terrific condition, but also we wanted a few records that are in average condition. That is how I play records on my turntable and the wear my stylus is subject to. We did not want only NM records for we don't believe that represents real life use of a turntable. Nor do we want all VG or VG+ records since most of us work to upgrade or we are picky about what cartridge we use to play them. All records are ultrasonic cleaned and finished on a VPI17 vacuum machine, as we've noted prior. From that perspective, these records are on balance in better condition and better cleaned than most users I know. This chart shows the near normal distribution in condition of the selected vinyl records for this test. As far as the records selected for this experiment, they date from 1958 for the sole mono title, then from 1961 to 1989 for the stereo titles. Most records are from the 1980s, but numerous titles are from the 1970s and some from the 1960s. The records are a mixture of rock, folk, country, R&B, easy listening, Broadway musicals, gospel, orchestral music and classical. These titles feature singers, some bands, some choirs, but also classical, for example Bach organ music. They come from obscure record companies such as Westminster Records, but most are RCA, Epic, Capital, Angel and MGM. The bottom line is that we believe these records and their condition are representative of records most of us play. Finally, the manner in which the records are cleaned means that stylus life will likely be optimized in this test, and not foreshortened due to dirty vinyl.
I don't see why you would need to estimate if you know how long it has been playing. You only need to know the record play time so that you can account for the small non-play time between each play for best accuracy.
Duh. Sometimes I can make the obvious seem invisible. OK, I forgot that you just need to know how long it's been playing, if anything you would figure roughly how many times it repeated and minus the few seconds (by however many times it repeats) it takes for the arm to restart.
Thank you! As BendBound mentioned in his first post, one of our main reasons for choosing this particular stylus is because it represents a wide variety of today's most popular cartridges. I personally prefer the more advanced tips myself — MicroRidge being my all-time favorite — but there are just as many audiophiles who care less about the stylus tip and care more about the generator, the body materials, the cantilever, the operating principle (moving coil, moving iron, induced magnet, ceramic (!), etc.), how it's all tuned or voiced, etc. Here is the line from BendBound's post that lists a few of today's popular cartridges that use bonded elliptical diamonds: That's just a brief sampling. There are a bunch of other Sumiko carts that use bonded ellipticals, priced from $100 to $500; there are the Benz Micro Silver and Benz Micro Gold, $500 to $600; almost all of Grado's cartridges, including the $275 Opus3 and $400 Platinum3; the Soundsmith Otello, $600; and probably a few others I'm forgetting. The main thing is that we wanted to make the results of the stylus wear study useful to as many people as possible, not just audiophiles but all vinyl enthusiasts. For what it's worth, we're already discussing future stylus wear studies using different stylus shapes! If this study goes well, it's possible that we could do another study, and that one might be of a more advanced stylus shape. Certainly if anyone is willing to donate such a stylus, that would make it much easier for us to run the next experiment. (This is a good time to mention that we received donations from several members of the Vinyl Engine site; their donations helped make this experiment possible. Kudos to them!)
We have already thought of this. If we assume that the average side of a record is 18 minutes long, then in 24 hours one record will see ~80 plays. That is essentially 40 plays per side. We have timed the return cycle for the Sanyo turntable. It is precisely 7 seconds or ~560 seconds per 24 hour period. Add to that the time to flip a record or to cue up the next record, maybe another 5 to 10 seconds. Essentially, that is just over 9.5 minutes per day. So every day is 23 hours – 5o minutes of record playing. @BMRR, the team's record slave, is committed to flipping the record every 12 hours±. He knows this adjustment number and we have factored this time into our schedule on when to have the stylus tip evaluated.
Weird. I have nearly 700 hours on a 2M Bronze on a modded RP6 ,and despite testing on all sorts of inner tracks, I get no distortion or issues that I can hear. 430 hours seems extremely low to be having those issues with a 2M.
This topic I find is fascinating. You may be correct, but please bear with me. I can no longer find the references but I've seen extensive research on what humans can hear distortion wise and over time. I've read, for example, where folks insist they have cartridges with thousands of hours on them and they hear no difference from when those were installed. Okay, could be true. But what has intrigued me is the simple question of how would they know? For me even short-term ABX tests have been problematic. The level of detail that one would have to recall is significant. Consider that you put say 200 to 300 hours per year on your cartridge. For 700 hours is over two years. To get to 2,000 hours on a cartridge would take what nearly 7 years, up to 10. How can anyone claim to remember high frequency data from a vinyl record played on one stylus over that period? If so, that is called echoic memory, and its pretty rare. This has been researched, Term for describing auditory memory similar to 'eidetic' (for visual memory) . Also, follow some of the other links within that website. Next, consider that everyday our hearing is degrading. See that in this page: Human Hearing Range: Hearing Testing Frequency, Pitch, and What’s Normal . Below I am reproducing a chart from this article... ...given my age, I think it safe to say I cannot hear high frequency distortion. But I have learned how to hear sibilance. That has been my dead giveaway on a worn stylus. Next, Audio Technica advises... Replacing the Stylus Stylus life expectancy varies according to stylus profile type and the frequency of record and stylus care. Following is the approximate life expectancy by stylus profile type. Conical – 300 to 500 hours Elliptical – 300 hours Micro Linear – 1000 hours Shibata – 800 hours Now, these hours are close to what JICO published in owner’s manuals, as follows: JICO specifies 3% THD at 15kHz as being the point where a stylus is past its best and technically out of spec. See this list for the expected hours to reach this point for different stylus types. Spherical / Conical – 150 hours Elliptical – 250 hours Shibata / Line Contact – 400 hours SAS / MicroRidge – 500 hours JICO is not referencing completed useful life, more frustration. Its true a tip can be used beyond this threshold, but its reproduction of sound will degrade further from the 3% THD (that most humans cannot hear) and the cartridge is due for a tip replacement soon. Tell me someone who has the equipment at home to measure 3% total harmonic distortion at 15Hz. Sounds like you have really great hearing. Our experiment using an elliptical stylus tip will record also two sides of vinyl at 96kHz and 24 bit. I'm hoping we can learn about high frequency degradation in this experiment.
I don't have really great hearing , though its fine. High frequency loss I cant say, but distortion from a worn stylus is very obvious and you can go hunting for it in places it will be known to show up with a worn stylus, like inner grooves. Its a slippery slope for sure.
