Every Styli known to man

[richard]

Jean, that Expert stylus tip/cantiliever is a fantastic piece of work! It's very impressive. I especially like the way that the diamond fits into the mating slot on the cantilever. Precise orientation of an advanced diamond tip is incredibly important, and this is a wonderful way to achieve it. Are these your own photos?

[jloveys]

Not sure if that is the paratrace profile   I will see if I can take a photo and we can compare.

However, I believe the more refine the profile and the closer the profile is to the grooves of the record, the longer the stylus will last. So may be JA cart is worth the investment after all  

David, I copied these photos from the Vinylengine site, and the guy said he replaced his defective Kontrapunkt with the Paratrace. Worth the visit anyway : http://www.vinylengine.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=143044.
Brian might remember this : http://www.vinylengine.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=12052&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

My choice for JA was because of sonics AND longevity. As they say on 6 Moons : 10 times the price of a MusicMaker but lasts 10 times longer...so ?  

Jean.

[daiwok]

Richard - great piece of writing and certainly a great read in this subject. However there is another question which needs to be addressed :

However, I believe the more refine the profile and the closer the profile is to the grooves of the record, the longer the stylus will last.

Does anyone agree ?

Jean - your posting makes sense now on the Paratrace, thanks for clarifying. The reason for me questioning is that Expert Stylus uses white sapphire cantilever. Depending on the material which the paratrace is bonding to the method of adhesion is different which is where the main confusion comes in as that photo looked different, but now you have mentioned and clarified that its from an Ortofon Kontrapunkt cart it reminds me of the paratrace I have on my SPU which also looks different to that on my MIDAS. Basically its the glue which is applied which forms a different appearance.

With regards to JA's 10,000 hrs of use, can this be quantified in anyway ? this is the highest number of hours I have ever heard on a cart.

[willbewill]

it seems from the cartridge literature that the stylus is basically worn after 150 to 200hrs  from my previous experiences stylis are good for at least 800hrs plus - whats your experience on this ? 

Are they just being cautious or do they want to sell more replacement styli

[brian]

Stylus life depends on material, contact area, orientation of the gemstone, cleanliness of groove, correctness of cartridge alignment - and downpressure.

At 1g or less, providing all the other factors are optimized there is no reason a stylus shouldn't be good for 10k hours.
At 2g maybe half that? As a rough estimate.

Ask Wyndham Hodgson.

[rfgumby]

Koetsu's list stylus tip profile as "quadrahedron".  I tried to find a pic of that profile, but haven't come up with one yet.  I'm only interested because of the way they shrug off surface noise and thought seeing the profile may lead to an explanation.

[daiwok]

Taken from here

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Magnetic_cartridge

Stylus shape

The physical shape of the stylus has a bearing on its performance. The most obvious shape is the spherical stylus (also known as "conical"), where the tip of the stylus is ground to a hemisphere for playing monophonic recordings or for rugged use. However, this shape is unable to faithfully track all possible variations in a record groove. Better quality LP styli use an elliptical or "line contact" shape, arranged with its 0.02 mm (0.0007 inch) long axis across the record groove. The short axis may be from 0.005 to 0.01 mm (.0002 to .0004 inch) depending on the particular design. This shape followed the undulations of the groove better than spherical stili because they more closely resembled the triangular cutter used to create the groove.

In later years, bi-radial styli appeared where, in the perpendicular axis, the tip of the stylus was ground to a smaller radius than the main body. The result was a stylus that rode slightly lower in the groove and even more closely matched the shape of the triangular cutter than the elliptical design. There were several variations on the basic bi-radial design depending on the manufacturer who produced them.

[richard]

David, the quote in your last post presents the parabolic shapes with different language from mine. It reminded me to refer to a term that I haven't used earlier: the bearing radius. This term refers to the diamond cuts that bear the weight of the tracing system: the vertical footprint along the groove walls. Parabolic styli spread the bearing weight along the height of the groove wall more than do ordinary conical or eilliptical needles.

Wilbewill wrote:

Are they just being cautious or do they want to sell more replacement styli?

Well, yeah. I mean, it is a business. Typically, main-brand phono cartridges were often offered by manufacturers to dealers at discounts. The sale of cartridges to dealers was very competitive and the field was rife with dishonest tactics. Cartridge makers such as Shure, AT, and Empire, offered special product designations to volume dealers in order to help dealers constrain competition.

Once a cartridge had been purchased, the consumer was now a "captive market" for replacment styli. Sale of "captive consumables" is an interesting topic that I've never seen discussed (probably because I've never looked). Traditionally, replacement needles were not discounted. When did any of us ever see a sale on styli? I believe that the cartridge makers enjoyed the benefits of needles wearing out.

The dedicated audiophile marketplace has been a very different ballgame. The "cottage" manufacturers don't usually employ deep discounting to dealers and dealers have far greater sales costs per unit sold. I believe that the manufacturers, in general, are far more honest and dedicated to their crafts. Their production costs are far greater. David, we touched on this when we visited. Your knowledge of the way that these factors break down is superior to mine. It sometimes amazes me that there's any audiophile market at all.

Is it possible for a stylus designer to produce a tip, or a designer of an integrated  complete playback system consisting of an arm/cartridge/stylus and whatever ancillary electronics are required, to reduce friction so much that the playback temperature/pressure won't degrade the diamond? I do not know. Weathers seemed to be aiming in this direction while he was at "the business." Stax parallelled Weathers in Japan and perhaps worked with similar goals. Weathers did make claims about stylus longevity. He was wrong. Weathers exited his manufacturing venture too early in the stereo game, so he didn't play with the marketing of advanced stylus shapes.

It would be interesting to know what lurked in the minds of needle makers who were engaged in the manufacture of both playback as well as cutting styli. Whereas Stanton made special double-pointed needles for the purpose of evaluating and polishing record molds, I never looked into their place in the cutting world. One company that worked on both sides was Micro-Acoustics. They did produce some sort of super-duper advanced playback needle, but I don't know anything about it. It is possible, too, that the Tetrad Diamond Company made both. Anybody have anything to add on this subject?

Question: I notice that I've been submitting typos recengly. Is there any recommended spell checker for use with this board?

[brian]

Interestingly - or not - cutting styli are all corundum (aluminium oxide) gem stones. That is either sapphire or ruby. Never diamond (at least for lacquers. Don't know about DMM).Typically cost eighty something dollars (Adamant, Transco). Nothing fancy.

Of course, no cutting engineer worth his salt frets about stylus life.
Consumables 

[richard]

Brian wrote,

Interestingly - or not - cutting styli are all corundum (aluminium oxide) gem stones.
And those lacquers sure are soft and fragile. I've got a couple of me performing as a child, and they're coated with what looks like fungus. Or something.

Talking about hard materials, I wonder why I haven't heard of Cubic Zirconium being used for cantilevers. Maybe the audiophiles would reject it because of its common applications: fake diamond jewelry hawked constantly on TV.

Truce: I get cynical about the audiophile marketplace and the product hustles, but in truth, many fine audio products have been developed over the decades by audiophiles and audiophile/music lovers (yes, they do exist). I'm blabbing here, in fact, to check out a free spell checker to help me with my typos. The program is called tinySpell. In the past, I found that it consumed too many resources on the computer for me, but this time, it's an uninstalled "portable" version: more civilized with memory, etc. It's freeware.

[brian]

I'm looking for one called Cockney Spell. The current one makes me talk all posh like.
No wot eye meen?

[hatehifi]

If your spell checker doesn't work out try Mozilla.org freeware

[jloveys]

With regards to JA's 10,000 hrs of use, can this be quantified in anyway ? this is the highest number of hours I have ever heard on a cart.

David: I asked JA how he knows the longevity of his stylus. Here is the answer:

  "Hi Jean,

This we test by test persons that have cartridges and we check them each year , after they notify the hours playing , but you must understand we give this play time for optimal conditions, like  S 10 Simon York turntable , and  S 7 , etc , the better the arm and turntable , you can play very long after with this equipment .
Also we get sometimes cartridges in for test or check up , 10  years and the needle is only go down for 5 % , this persons play 3 hours a day so it is easy to calculate.

Best Regards

Jan.

[daiwok]

Great stuff, May be one day I like to meet JA and understand more about his carts. I was looking at them before modifying the Denon carts, but got a lot of feedback from users smoking up the coils inside the cart   Even one of them has a Tron Seven BTW - this got me worried   I know JA winds his own special coils which is part of the secret of his sound. The channel separation is like 60db I recall twice the nearest competitor ! However, unless I understand what people are doing wrong, I cannot imagine installing such a cart in my system and BBQ it   May be I should give him one of my MIDAS for upgrade  

BTW - I don't rate the Simon Yorke arm, I have played with it on my friends system and we both prefer the MG1 over it.

[jloveys]

Yes, this was a big question for me too...but I don't know of any other phonopreamp with 75dB gain with tubes...
The frying coils were all coming from England. I never had any problems in 2 years intensive use. I think that Graham Tricker fixed that problem. But I still don't understand how you can have DC feedback with an AC preamp...
"Also the Seven is AC loaded so there is no harmful DC component interfering with the cartridge coils so the cartridge is allowed to perform at it best without any external influence.    (quote G. Tricker)

Anyway, it would be a good idea to ask Jan about your Midas, he knows very well the Denons.

Jean.