Are you seeing nearly equal damage on both sides of the grooves and the stylus tips? Or more one side or the other.
Thanks!
Record wear article
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Thanks!
RayParkhurst
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The stylus hits bottom because the contact flats merge together into a chisel-shaped tip. That sounds bad, but it doesn't really mean the tip damages the groove.
Indeed my theory about the VM95ML's causing damage relates to the suspension. When I sent the VM95ML REV back to AT, they said that they haven't heard any complaints regarding their current production MLs, and sent me one dated Feb 2026. Unfortunately it had the same (visually) suspension as the earlier production, and did the same level of damage to my test record. The suspension of the Conical and Shibata are different from the ML, and the Conical is different from the Shibata.
RayParkhurst
Active Member
The stylus tip in SWS3 wore very uniformly on both contacts. The damage occurred mostly in high modulation areas, and appeared to be due to mistracking. Damage was visible on both L and R groove walls, though more happened on R than L.
Vinyl wears a diamond down, but a diamond has no effect on vinyl? Doesn't make any sense. A record get's damaged with the first play; this can't be argued...the scale of damage can.
If you don't want to damage records:
a) don't play them
or
b) play/read them with a laser (ELP)...though just handling them introduces wear/damage...again, this can't be argued...the scale can.
Or simply go to digital streaming. Wear issues solved (except maybe in 25 years, to replace old electrolytic caps).
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RayParkhurst
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Hah! This thread started with a Record Wear article that was based on SWS3 !!Thanks for the answer. Sorry for not knowing, but what is SWS3?
RayParkhurst
Active Member
Actually, SWS4a and SWS4b both show that Conicals at 2.0g (VM95C) don't cause groove damage and cause very little wear to both the record and the stylus.
Sorry, after four pages of threads, I get lazy sometimes and ask a needless question.
RayParkhurst
Active Member
No worries, SWS3 is 46 pages, and SWS4b is 78 !!
RayParkhurst
Active Member
No kidding. So much discussion and controversy and data. Would actually have been nice if that Record Wear article had done a better job of summarizing the study, without errors and fabrications and hidden agendas.For me, the definition of "TL;DR."
Sorry again, short attention span here.
What's the difference between wear and damage? Give it enough time and the Charging Bull of New York will become an ox.
We all know that all profiles do wear on a vinyl record, or at least we should know by now. The debate in my mind is just how much and how fast using good equipment. In the past that number has seen many opinions by many professionals. How to know when to change a stylus is difficult because we would like to change it before it causes more damage than a less worn stylus, and since there has been a lot of numbers thrown out there that can be a problem. I didn't really think there was a controversy on which profile lasted the longest and therefor did the least damage A stylus that has little wear, tracking well shouldn't damage a record as much as one that is worn and mistracking, but we know every play does do a small amount of wear, ever so minute but still wear it does. And I meant to add that a ML or Shibita profile should be the least wearing of the profiles. That was why they designed them, to be able to trace the high frequency range for descrete 4 channel quad records and not wear them as fast as an elliptical.
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RayParkhurst
Active Member
The ML/MR's unique shape actually has 3 failure modes:
1) The minor radius is worn into a contact flat, causing an increase in 2H distortion (~100-200 hours). Some folks might replace at this point, but I personally consider this "broken in". 2H gradually increases after this as the contact patch grows.
2) The two contact flats merge at the tip, which starts to hit bottom on some records (~300-600 hours). Hitting bottom causes an increase in noise and a loss of imaging specificity on some records, and a dramatic increase in 2H, yet the actual 2H level is still no worse than a typical new elliptical. I would personally replace it at this point, but many folks continue playing since the distortion is still reasonable.
3) The tip rides on the bottom, getting wider as the contact flats wear higher and wider. Eventually, the ridge itself is worn away (~2000+ hours). I have never played an ML to this point but I've seen some that have been.
I define damage as going beyond the point of plastic deformation of the vinyl. In my tests this mainly seems to happen due to mistracking, but the shaving of the HF peaks by the SAS could also be called damage since they are not worn smooth but actually displaced and removed.
One thing I discovered in these tests is that almost all records have "grainy patches" on the leading edges of high modulation waveforms. These grainy patches are not part of the music, but an artifact of some part of the record production process, likely plating. They end up getting "smoothed over" by the stylus in most places, but in some places the stylus digs in and ploughs bits of them away. Since they are not part of the music I have a hard time saying that removing them is damage.
Yes, I believe proper tracking is the key to minimizing both stylus and record wear.
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