My AT3600 stylus was not only perfect but excellent, that said the cost of second hand microscopes is not high, I recently bought a German Leitz Wetzlar stereo microscope with 30x 100x anf 450x for 25 bucks!!! I just bought another set of eyepieces which are 20x which will give me 200x without needing to get too close to the stylus. Point is at these prices not worth risking your records, a loup wont be enough in most cases to see stylus damage. I have two Jico Shibata stylus, one for a 681 which has always sounded terrible and one for an 881 which sounds much better but still looks horrible. The pic I took was with my camera down the eyepiece so it is much more blurry than the super sharp microscope image, actually it took about 10 attempts to get the pic at all but you can see the how terrible the very expensive Jico Shibata is. I wish I had my microscope when I bought the stylus as it would have been returned right away and it would not have been played which will have done some damage to my records. Here is the pic.
My AT3600 stylus was not only perfect but excellent, that said the cost of second hand microscopes is not high, I recently bought a German Leitz Wetzlar stereo microscope with 30x 100x anf 450x for 25 bucks!!! I just bought another set of eyepieces which are 20x which will give me 200x without needing to get too close to the stylus. Point is at these prices not worth risking your records, a loup wont be enough in most cases to see stylus damage. I have two Jico Shibata stylus, one for a 681 which has always sounded terrible and one for an 881 which sounds much better but still looks horrible. The pic I took was with my camera down the eyepiece so it is much more blurry than the super sharp microscope image, actually it took about 10 attempts to get the pic at all but you can see the how terrible the very expensive Jico Shibata is. I wish I had my microscope when I bought the stylus as it would have been returned right away and it would not have been played which will have done some damage to my records. Here is the pic.
Chris
This is the same cart with a probably defective headshell shipped from NJ. Wasn't aware of deleted posts. I have had one before and was wanting to give it another listen, why I ordered it from china. I just stumbled upon this other listing this morning and was sharing a good deal with anyone interested. I figure these are defective headshells, there were many posts about them about 2 yrs ago. The carts were genuine AT and were fine. Seller in NJ must have bought a lot cheap as they are $10 shipped. I am in Colorado and have no clue who the seller is. I'm guessing headshells are defective as they sell for $25-50 elsewhere, maybe not. Time will tell. Already have shipping confirmation. I don't understand the tone of your reply. I thought I stated they were chinese AT3600l, just shipped from NJ.
No the pic shown was only 35x but it was the only magnification I could easily take a picture of down the eyepiece. The pic was only to show the terrible quality of the Jico Shibata diamond. At 100x shows bubbles on the contact area which shows very well that this stylus was damaging the record, but this magnification was too blurry with the camera. I dont have an attachment for my camera I was just taking a pic with my camera down the microscope eyepiece with no flash so pic shaky this was incredibly hard to do. Higher magnification showed clearly contact areas but did not show the whole stylus which was also the point of my picture. I have read your link a while ago which is why I have bought extra eyepieces as this gives more magnification whilst keeping depth of field.
Pin was about 5 degrees off and pressed so tight that I couldn't move it, with tools. I admit I didn't go all out because I thought gemini would send me a replacement. I have a dozen headshells new and used and this is the only one that had this problem. If the new one is the same I'll put it in a vise and not worry about tool marks.
Sorry, my bad.
Look at the pics I posted before the ones that look like lumps of coal. Well the same rough bubble like finish continues to the contact areas. I know it was doing damage as I had to clean what looked like vinyl off the stylus before I put it under the microscope.
Have a look at post 62 on this thread. This shows the bubble like flaws on the diamond, these can also be seen on the contact area that was very rough under higher magnification.The sad bit was what I cleaned off to examine the stylus looked rather like vinyl that the horrible Shibata tip had sanded off my records. Thankfully I did not play too many.
I'll give it a shot. I was afear'd of messing up the arm. I had tried pliers, firm but gently. I put tape on the teeth, like I do with plumbing trim. Wierdly, spell checker came up with Normarh when I typed like. WTH
