Yes, I was doing it, possibly more than now. I went through cartridges like water. Also, several turntables, less amps, and speakers. A lot of it may have been bad record pressings, and recordings. If it was popular, they stamped records out (truckloads?) when they should have scrapped the dies. Nobody complained, they were making nice profits, and the result was poor. I had some albums that I put a lot of hours on. I used to joke that one of these days I may hold it up the the light, and it will show through.
Then I found a couple of them in the old closeout section of a store years later, and was thrilled. One day I opened them to see how much better they would sound. Big disappointment. They sound like they were played day after day on a cheap jukebox, or were played on a bad changer. I tried them on different tables ( arms,cartridges too) and the same result. I gave them time to break-in, and they never sounded as good as the worn out ones I had. They must have been stamped on super high hour dies.
In about the '90s, I had ended up about at least a half of a dozen of audio friends, even more with the out of town/state ones, finally, more time and money. We bought and swapped a ton of all kinds of audio gear for years. It was a lot easier, with a lot of us involved. Finally settling down some, at least I hope.
