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Stylus wear as a function of tracking weight.

catman

catman

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G'day all, as I'm facing the prospect of replacing a worn M97xE cartridge stylus and playing around today with an AT95E tracking at a somewhat heavier 2 grams, I wonder if a heavier tracking stylus is likely to wear 'a lot faster'.

One would possibly think so, but is that assumption entirely correct? :scratch2: I did read on a forum today somewhere about reports of the faster wear of the AT95E stylus. Is this the expected result of a stylus tracking at 2 grams as opposed to one tracking at the lighter 1.25 grams of the M97xE, for example? :scratch2: Regards, Felix aka catman.
 
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The initial wear what I have seen is always a very small spot, presumably independent of stylus shape.
So the severe wear would be depending on how the increasing area on the needle looks like. A microline would wear much faster than a spherical, possibly. The needle pressure might have an influence, maybe. Also the surface finish on the needle.
For a good polished nude Shibata I normally use them 1500h without any problems.
gusten
 
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Shure claimed a direct relationship in their lit', other say no. I tend to side with Shure as the other opinion seems a denial of physics to me, there is an optimum TF for a given stylus, depending on ALL of the relevant factors IMO tho' it is not an absolute precise figure.
 
I read an article about this. The article stated 1.5 grams or less is best. However, stylus design certainly is a factor. I would not have any concerns up to 2 grams. The spec is 1.5 to 2.5 grams. I used the AT95e at 1.6 grams without any issues.
 
All of this assumes clean records. IMHO the biggest factor in stylus wear is plain old dirt. The cleaner your records, the longer the styli will last.

OTOH, like all abrasive and polishing systems, the more pressure applied, the faster the material is removed ...
 
BrocLuno said:
All of this assumes clean records. IMHO the biggest factor in stylus wear is plain old dirt. The cleaner your records, the longer the styli will last.

OTOH, like all abrasive and polishing systems, the more pressure applied, the faster the material is removed ...
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I was thinking this as well, and as you mentioned polishes and such, there are things such as plaster dust or gypsum dust or just simply living in an area with a lot of concrete or other reasons for silica based dust to be in the air. This will settle on the records and also in other areas and the microfine particulate matter of silica in this way would definitely have a cumulative effect on the shape of the needles. I was just ruminating on this a while ago when I'm looking at a Pickering stylus from the 60s that was in a very nice deck and a brand new Audio Technica stylus that hadn't been played yet. The older Pickering probably or at least potentially had thousands of hours on it. But it has no blunted tip at all in fact it's much sharper than the brand new Audio Technica. Leaving me to believe that the primary wear on this was likely from the groove sides then downward Force. It would certainly lend credence to why the needle on the right, after all these years is of a sharper tip than a brand new one... though I know that they avoid making the new needles sharp on the tip I would think that they were doing that back then as well to a certain degree.
 

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At one of his seminars, Peter Ledermann, an accomplished cartridge designer and retipper among other things, discussed stylus and disk wear. In the case of more advanced stylus profiles like Microline, Micro ridge, Shibata, the tracking force is higher because the contact area is also longer and narrower, making the unit force per area the same or less compared a low tracking force elliptical and hyper elliptical stylii.

Ledermann noted that, aside from hard debris that may get between the groove walls and stylus interface, wear was in fact caused by the mechanical resonance of the cantilever, suspension, magnet (in the case of MM) or coils (in the case of MC). These typically have their resonance in the 15kHz -35kHz region with considerable amplitude. The resonance is like a vibration in all directions as the mass is stimulated by scanning the grooves. Add the intertial resistance to motion and it can beat the undulations in groove walls that leads to high-frequency attenuation and noise.

To demonstrate this, an MC can play a lacquer cutting maybe 2 to 6 times, absolute maximum. In comparison, the low-mass strain gauge cartridge has a lower amplitude resonance around 90kHz. He set the tracking force to 3g or more and played the lacquer cutting 150 times with no detectable degradation. That is monumental.

So, by far and large, the increase in tracking force had a very small impact. The inertial resistance to motion and high amplitude resonance of the moving mass is what kills these devices and our disks.
 
sean sweeney said:
I was thinking this as well, and as you mentioned polishes and such, there are things such as plaster dust or gypsum dust or just simply living in an area with a lot of concrete or other reasons for silica based dust to be in the air. This will settle on the records and also in other areas and the microfine particulate matter of silica in this way would definitely have a cumulative effect on the shape of the needles. I was just ruminating on this a while ago when I'm looking at a Pickering stylus from the 60s that was in a very nice deck and a brand new Audio Technica stylus that hadn't been played yet. The older Pickering probably or at least potentially had thousands of hours on it. But it has no blunted tip at all in fact it's much sharper than the brand new Audio Technica. Leaving me to believe that the primary wear on this was likely from the groove sides then downward Force. It would certainly lend credence to why the needle on the right, after all these years is of a sharper tip than a brand new one... though I know that they avoid making the new needles sharp on the tip I would think that they were doing that back then as well to a certain degree.
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Your stylus is very sharp so it is stuffed, very very very worn.
Chris
 
catBot said:
Was it documented somewhere on-line? I'd like to read in more details there.
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Yes, I believe the seminar was uploaded to YT. There are only a few videos, so if you search “Soundsmith” or “Peter Ledermann” it will be one of the immediate results. My apologies for not have a link to the exact one.
 
As mentioned, the absolute VTF is not as important as the actual PSI pressure of the contact area. Thr early Shure “lighter is better for wear” was heavily promoted when the most advanced tip was just elliptical.

JICO had a page showing the contact area pressures, with the more advanced tips all having significantly less pressure even with higher VTF. IIRC, Micro Acoustics claimed the same thing with their advanced tips and the electret condenser design coupled with very long cantilevers, which was specifically to address transient response (not just tracking) that was due to effective tip mass & to the resonance, though I don’t recall wear ever being mentioned. The trade off danger has always been “is there more damage to record (& possibly stylus tip wear) from mistracking at too light a VTF vs wear from increased VTF to prevent mistracking”, right?

That is just one reason I prefer the more advanced tips. They always have lighter cantis, so momentum from effectively tip mass has to be less. In my limited experiences they do indeed last much longer.
 
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