How often, and how, do you clean your stylus?


I used to brush the stylus before each side played but now I think that is excessive, so I check it with a jewelers loupe.  I also rotate between the brush and sometimes use Blue Tack instead of the brush.  

mojo771

Of course the electronic stylus cleaners do not work through cavitation and could not possibly do so. You need a liquid medium in which to generate the bubbles.  There is no claim that I ever saw that they operate by cavitation or that they are even truly ultrasonic.  Somehow, that descriptor got attached to those gadgets, maybe because ultrasonic record cleaners are so in vogue. The Audioquest is said to operate at 480Hz, but I am sure there is quite a lot of variation in frequency from unit to unit, which is why I originally wrote "400-500Hz".  My guess is they literally shake the dirt off the stylus and cantilever.  The first time I used mine, to clean a well used Koetsu Urushi, a big gob of dust came out of the workings of the cartridge.  Which made me think that one conceivable advantage of the electronic cleaners is that they may do a decent job of shaking out dust that is on the "top side" of the cantilever, the side closest to the cartridge body, which is normally not accessible for direct cleaning, unless you're working under magnification and with fine tools.

You suggest that Audioquest mentions using their electronic cleaner "wet". Where did you see that, and how would that work? (I'll look in the owners manual, which I have here somewhere.) I am not fearful of damage from the Audioquest; the cartridge structure is well designed to deal with the frequency range of its operation, which is audible as a 400-500Hz tone.  And I use it for no more than 10-15 seconds at a time. I WOULD be hesitant to expose a cartridge to anywhere near the frequencies at which ultrasonic cleaners operate, which would probably be ineffective anyway without an aqueous bath.

Just for the record (!) the S_DUO does have a shallow distilled water bath that the stylus is immersed in. It comes with several rubber washers to make the sidewall of the bath, so that the height of it can support the cartridge with just the stylus and cantilever tip getting wet. The stylus is not supposed to touch the bottom of the water bath. As I said, very fiddly to use. However it does work (I posted before and after photos here) and I do believe it is ultrasonic in nature.

 

For the past few months, a DS Audio ST-50 when I feel like it, typically every 5 or 6 sides. Before that, a slice of Magic Eraser on a business card. If I can actually see anything on the stylus, I touch it first with the short- bristled Ortofon brush that came with my A90.

Humminguru s-duo. For the man with cojones. Never heard of it before now.