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Cartridge break-in: with or without tears?

Or: how do you do it? I think I must have gone about it the wrong way. This weekend I changed my very old cartridge with its broken-down suspension for a new Benz Glider. With this new cartridge I listened to records in the normal fashion for a couple of days, happy enough with what I was hearing but calculating how many weeks it would be until I got to hear what the cartridge would sound like once it was broken in--and thus until I would be in a position to decide whether my turntable (a Rega P3) was something I could live with for a while longer or whether (as I suspect) it really needs to be replaced with something considerably better very soon.

Then I got impatient. I set the stylus down on the locked-out pink noise section of a Cardas frequency sweep burn-in record (well cleaned beforehand) and let it play for a few hours. Every once in a while it occurred to me to wonder whether this could possibly be a good idea, since normal vinyl doesn't like a stylus repeating the same track even twice over within a couple of hours, and here was this track being traced some hundreds of times all during the same afternoon. Meanwhile the pink noise was still pink (though what else would even *destroyed* pink noise sound like?), and nothing was smoking. After three or four uneasy hours I decided enough was enough and went to lift the arm. The stylus had accumulated gray junk all over it and up the cantilever. Since I'd brushed and Premiered and RRL'd and Loricrafted the record beforehand it seemed unlikely that the junk was record mould release or normal dirt, which left the unhappy possibility that it was instead chewed up vinyl, ploughed up by my brand new stylus. I cleaned everything up, and the cartridge sounds okay (or sufficiently okay: I am guessing that the tizzy treble I sometimes get is a matter either of bad lps or of the cartridge's newness). So I am hoping I did no real harm (except to the break-in record, which had other problems in any case). But I feel I may have narrowly averted real damage.

So what do you guys say? Have you ever done this, and have you ended up with pulverized vinyl and traumatized cartridge? Have you all known from the beginning not to try this?

I am coming to the unhappy conclusion that I don't deserve to upgrade my turntable this year or possibly ever.
sre
twl
3,251 posts
 
I just play records until it's broken-in.

I don't use the same one over and over.

I expect that once you get the stylus clean again, everything will be ok, except maybe the test record could be toast.
dougdeacon
3,338 posts
 
I've used those Cardas tracks to help break in several cartridges. One friend's Shelter 901 spent weeks on the damn thing before it started sounding decent.

My TT turns itself off after 45 minutes, so I take that opportunity to brush things off and switch to a different groove. Going several hours in one groove does seem like pushing one's luck. Give that poor groove a break.

I clean my records exactly like you, but there's always some stuff piled up around the stylus after an extended stay in the same groove. Clean the stylus and cantilever thoroughly and you should be okay. A very gentle scrub with a piece cut off a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser (household cleaning product) works wonders for that baked on gunk.

BTW, I'm not sure it's very useful to actually listen to the pink noise. I think most of the breaking in is mechanical, especially if the cartridge is the only new component. I prefer to spare my ears.
cpdunn99's avatar
cpdunn99
639 posts
 
...just as Tom and Doug say... but about those "tizzy" highs: could be the VTA?
kurt_tank
1,189 posts
 
I too just play records and let it break in slowly. Given that cartridges only last a thousand (or maybe two thousand hours, if you are lucky), I hate giving away 10% or so of my cartridge's life on break-in. I might as well listen and enjoy how much better I like it once it is broken in.

And yes, the Glider II has a little bit of an HF edge to it. (I still consider it to be a good cartridge, because except for that, it sounds really good, and has pretty good frequency extension. It does lack a really deep dark background though. I eventually went to the Koetsu line to tame that HF and to get the really black backgrounds I was looking for; and of course the Koetsu mid-range magic.)

How do you like your Loricraft BTW?
Does it really do that much better job than hand cleaning and then vacuuming the record clean?
I have considered getting one at some point. (I have a nitty gritty 1.0 that I got for basically nothing, and it works pretty well. However, I think I might want to jump up past the usual step up in RCMs (i.e. the VPI units), and get either the Loricraft or the Keith Monks machine.
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