The original question was "Correct me if I'm mistaken, but won't a modern stlyus take a beating being played on damaged discs?". "Stylus" would be defined as the actual diamond shard that's bonded to the cantilever (the tiny stick that protrudes from the body of the cartridge with the diamond mounted to the end of it) of a modern cartridge. The phrase "damaged discs" does not sound as if it intends to include broken discs in general context, and as the specific context of the discussion was regarding the amount of wear that a perfectly good disc might receive from being played with a wind-up phonograph, I strongly believe "broken discs" was plainly not intended for inclusion in that description -- not that this even matters.
Stand by whatever statement you wish, but facts are facts. A diamond stylus on a modern tonearm with a vertical tracking force of 3 to 5 grams is impervious to damage from being dragged at any speed across a surface that is softer than it is, period. The diamond can come loose from the cantilever, and the cantilever's suspension is certainly able to be damaged by excessive stylus travel, i.e., playing warped records or cracked and broken records. Even so, the diamond stylus itself will not be damaged, and can be remounted into a replacement cantilever in the same cartridge if one wishes to do so. Had the question been "Can a modern cartridge be damaged by playing badly damaged discs?", the answer would be yes, of course, as cantilevers can be quite fragile. But the question was about the stylus itself, not the cartridge. It's a diamond, Randy. You can drag a diamond down an asphalt road with an elephant perched atop, and though the road will be scratched (and the elephant a bit shaken), the diamond will remain unscathed. Your statement is incorrect, no matter how much you wish to stand by it. Best, r. PS -- Yes, steel needles do wear, as they are expressly intended to do. Berliner and his contemporaries all realized that either the needle would wear out OR the record would wear out, and since needles were cheaper to make, they included super-fine diamond dust as an ingredient in shellac specifically so that the steel needle would grind down to the exact shape of a given record's groove within the first number of revolutions -- which, by the way, is the reason we're instructed by needle makers and record companies alike to give each needle ONE play before replacing it, never to be used again. See how that works? Steel wears down. Diamonds do not. ----- Original Message ----- From: <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, March 07, 2005 7:18 PM Subject: Re: [Phono-L] Styli... > > > A shellac disc, no matter how damaged the grooves are, cannot hurt a DIAMOND > stylus with a vtf of 3g or so. > > > > > > I believe the phrase used in the original post was "badly damaged records", > or similar wording. I assumed this description would include records that have > a few gouges and scratches which run across the grooves at odd angles. > > The force per square inch brought to bear on any record stylus, even a > larger stylus designed for 78 RPM playback, is enormous. The undulations and > contortions a stylus has to follow make wear inevitable. The fact that these > worn, abrasive, and damaged records are spinning at more than twice the speed of > an LP only compounds the forces a stylus must endure. A diamond needle lasts > longer than a steel needle, but it still wears. I stand by my original > statement. > > Randy > _______________________________________________ > Phono-L mailing list > [email protected] > > Phono-L Archive > http://www.oldcrank.org/pipermail/phono-l/ >
