Phon stylus inspection

What do you look for under microscope? I’ve got a rather powerful hand held magnifying glass that I look at my needle from time to time, but if it’s clean, and riding in the groove at the correct angle, I’m not sure what I’d be looking for? Do you save photos from previous inspections to compare to? I would think that even under a microscope it would take a thousand hours for you to actually see wear? Or am I wrong on that? 

The cool thing about trying use a magnifier to check the angles of a stylus is that there is a peculiar distortion that actually, uh, distorts the apparent angle or alignment if you’re using a cartridge alignment tool.

I dont actually see any wear at this stage. i have only seen damage on others when they abused like DJ units-its a wonder some stay in the groove, mine are shibota like and never seem to change, i once put a laser on the tone arm trying to see the deflection in the groove,,, ha ha it moved more from and miniscule vib in the motor for the platter than with the music. need a photomultiplyer tube for that sort of craznesses.
Ill poat a pic link later.

http://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/crown-addiction-photos.340649/page-6

the best alignment is run a test stanard record which is exact as can be both right and left modulation in the groove. hook up a 2 ch oscilloscope to each side and look for any differential side to side and adjust for minimum ouput scope on additive signal and shoot for zero.

Then when balanced do a depth angle and shoot for maxium amplitude then do the side to side again if Anal. 10 mircrovolts diff is good.
do all this in quiet and no unusual vibration cause it may pick up your voice oscillations. naturally each cart/headshell got to be done separatley.
the standard records are hard to get hold of these days. radio stations used to have em but "carts and cd ended all that need I got mine from New York Institude of Technology when i was engineering therein 1980.