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MC Cartridge Degaussing Demagnetizing

An old topic that I would like to re-visit and would appreciate Jonathan Carr weighing in on.

What does LYRA use and/or recommend to degauss their (MC) cartridges?

What happened to the Audio Physic demagnetizer?
Immedia seems to have dropped them.

Since many companies/manufacturers of phono carts will NOT discuss degaussing their carts and/or the material of the armature is it OK to use the Cardas or Analogue Productions LPs instead?

How EXACTLY do these sweep records degauss a cartridge?

Is it OK to assume that IF a sweep record helps a cartridge sound better then a degausser or demagnetizer is appropriate?

Assuming no DC content and a very low level voltage and current... How EXACTLY can an AC rising and then falling signal fed into the cartridge cause the cartridge to fail prematurely?

Thanks! :^)
Tom M.
jhendrixfan

Showing 1 response by larryi

larryi
4,173 posts
 
Somewhere on this site is a very long and thoughtful piece on the subject by Jonathan Carr.

The use of a record to effect very mild degaussing would be the "safe," though far less effective way to do degaussing. What you do is short the output of cartridge to maximize the current flow in the cartridge's circuit (e.g., insert a plug into the RCA jack from the tonearm wire that shorts the two conductors).

The manufacturer that is dead set against degaussing is, I believe, Benz. They say that while it may improve the sound for a short while after doing the degaussing, with each such procedure, the sound will be degraded so that in the long run, the process ruins the cartridge.
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