Various Stylus Under A Microscope, DJ, etc.

[ChefE]

I used a AMScope at 3x and eyepiece WF15X with LED lighting overhead. Photos by my iPad 4 placing the lens to the eyepiece. I did not use the IPad zoom feature. Maybe I should have as well as additional points of reference/views.
Two photos for each stylus- straight down and from the left side.
1. Audio-Technica AT450. Black cart and gray stylus.
2. ADC ? Attached to a PSX-A. Black, silver with gold bottom cart and red stylus.
3. Empire XL30 with Empire I. Black cart and clear gold stylus.
4. Stanton 680-II with D680ELII. Black cart and blue stylus.
5. ION USB turntable stock GT Cartridge and stylus. Black cart and red stylus.
6. Shure M81MC with ? Stylus. Black cart and vintage bathroom green stylus.
7. Stanton 680-II with D680EL. Black cart and white stylus.
8. Shure M44-7. Black cart and white stylus.

 

[ChefE]

Continued from above.....in order I listed.
Enjoy the photos.

 

[ChefE]

Ps...the Stanton's white have the most hours, hundreds of hours of DJ use. Next most used are the Blues. I'm the original owner. The newest cart is the Shure M44-7 also for DJ use.
The AT450 came with a cheap used Sony wannabe 1200.
The ION I bought years and years ago which I only used a few times since the cartridge would pick up every sound in the room besides the record. I packed it up and in the closet it went until recently I took out the cart for experimental reasons. The Empire came with a Technics SL-5300 and a G-7700 receiver I purchased from a local older fellow. The rest came with a vintage Hitachi PS-48 ? turntable I bought for my girlfriend for her first turntable.
I wouldn't call any of these audiophile, although some are good for calling up the evil messages when playing records backwards.
Enjoy.

 

[jaybirdss396]

Interesting pics. But to get the best results for judging stylus wear you need to view with 200x power and side lighting to the left and right of the microscope table.
This thread http://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/sparkys-fabulous-diy-stylus-microscope.225960/ tells all about it.

I use a 10x objective lens with a 5x eyepiece for positioning and a 20x eyepiece (200x total) for viewing the wear facets. Just changing the eyepiece to get the higher 200x instead of rotating the turret is key to ease of use. You just fine tune the focus after positioning at lower magnification and your good to go.

These are crappy cell phone pics of the same type stylus (Acutex 312 str) at 200x. The first pic is with only a few hours and the second is worn out with several hundred hours on it.
These pics are pretty bad quality compared to what you actually see but will give an idea of what to look for.

 

[malden]

I was wondering where this thread was going...

 

[Blue Shadow]

Looks like we have one guy showing us a bunch of different styli and a second teaching us about how to look for wear without explaining what that wear is in the pics he posted. The wear is the white spots on the sides of the tip.which is the only part of the stylus that is in focus because at that magnification the depth of field is very shallow, about as deep as the wear spots.

 

[c_dk]

There were a number of microscope options available back in the day, most trading accuracy for a cheaper cost.

Only the Wild system would allow you, with it's rotating stage, to actually measure stylus wear, the others just expected you to compare it to a stock picture of a worn stylus.

The Wild turret system allowed many magnifications, maximum would typically be 15x50.

Mine is 10x50x1.5. I am hoping a ordered USB eyepiece will arrive soon so I can display worn styli with rotational measurements of the start and finish of the wear surfaces.

 

[ChefE]

The purpose of this thread is to be able to see up close certain styli. I'm not saying anything about what to look for in a worn tip. In my photos some are new and most are not. However the photos can help comparing and contrasting different models....example a bonded elliptical vs nude elliptical vs spherical. Or comparing same models like Stanton's D680EL (white) vs D680ELII (blue).

Having a stylus photo of it brand new with zero hours and another photo with 100 hours and another after 1,000 hours would be great. And even better if I had more zoom.

 

[ChefE]

Interesting pics. But to get the best results for judging stylus wear you need to view with 200x power and side lighting to the left and right of the microscope table.
This thread http://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/sparkys-fabulous-diy-stylus-microscope.225960/ tells all about it.

I use a 10x objective lens with a 5x eyepiece for positioning and a 20x eyepiece (200x total) for viewing the wear facets. Just changing the eyepiece to get the higher 200x instead of rotating the turret is key to ease of use. You just fine tune the focus after positioning at lower magnification and your good to go.

These are crappy cell phone pics of the same type stylus (Acutex 312 str) at 200x. The first pic is with only a few hours and the second is worn out with several hundred hours on it.
These pics are pretty bad quality compared to what you actually see but will give an idea of what to look for.
View attachment 924155 View attachment 924156

I agree. More power is needed, much more. The more I inspected the more I learned on what could be done to improve why I was doing this spur of the moment project.
All in all, even a cell phone zoom pix is better than not. So why not share? Some person will find it helpful.