Below is a photo of a conical diamond stylus tip after 1500 hours at 3g stylus pressure on a vinyl record, magnified 2000 times by an electron microscope (courtesy of Stanton) – you can see that not just the record has worn.
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Here is an answer I gave in a previous thread, based on what various manufacturers, suppliers and other hi-fi experts gave as a typical maximum stylus life. Here’s what a few said was the maximum life for various diamond stylus profiles:
- Conical, elliptical – 300-500 hrs (JVC)
- Conical – 500 hrs (Onkyo)
- SAS tip (line contact) – 500 hrs (Jico)
- Diamond stylus – 500 hrs (kabusa.com)
- Diamond stylus – 500 hrs (John Borwick – qualified engineer, recording specialist and former hi-fi reviewer from Gramophone magazine)
- Conical, elliptical – 500-800 hrs (Shure)
- Diamond stylus – 600-1000 hrs (lpgear.com)
- Elliptical – 800-1000 hrs (Pioneer)
- Conical, elliptical – 1000 hrs (A.J. van den Hul)
- Diamond stylus – up to 1000 hours without degradation and noticeable changes, 2000 hrs before worn out, with proper care including keeping records and styli clean (Ortofon)
- Van den Hul tip (line contact) – 3000 hrs (A.J. van den Hul)
So it’s somewhere between 300 hours minimum, and at the very most, 3000 hours, assuming no major mishaps such as dropping the stylus!
Among the variables which make it impossible to be absolutely precise are things such as:
- Record cleanliness
- Tip material - diamond is best, way ahead of sapphire (yes, that was widely used to save money) and steel
- Stylus profiles – line contacts are best, conical a long way behind, and elliptical slightly behind conical in terms of how quickly they wear – the stylus life is proportional to the area of record contact.
- Stylus tracking force – heavier tracking forces cause more wear. Shure found that tracking at 0.75 grams, a stylus tip lasted 120% longer than when tracking at 3g, and at 1g it lasted twice as long as at 3g
- Tip polish – smoother tips cause less friction, so the stylus tip and record wears less
- Record material – there are various types of record material, including shellac (mainly for 78’s), polystyrene and different types of vinyl, which cause varying amounts of wear.
However, there’s one thing that most agree on, and that is that diamond tips do wear out playing vinyl records.
For obvious reasons, some companies who made cartridges or styli may have advised pessimistically low figures, in order to get higher stylus or cartridge sales, or even to avoid having customers blame them with stories such as “they said my stylus would last x000 hours, and it only lasted x00 hours playing my records at 7g”!!
I think that Ortofon and van den Hul, given their long history of making or re-tipping styli and cartridges, are probably two of the more believable in the list above, while Jico are possibly rather under-estimating how long their SAS (micro-ridge) tip will last.
I think it's probably safer to change the stylus sooner rather than trying to squeeze the longest life from them, to safeguard valuable record collections from possible wear.
There is one other thing that can cause damage, and that's over-using various liquids for record or stylus cleaning, which often cause cantilever corrosion, according to van den Hul, based on the number that he's seen while stylus retipping. That's one reason he thinks wet playing records is very unwise and ultimately very expensive.