Stylus Wear Question

At the risk of tooting my own horn, I did a deep dive on this issue- stylus life- in helping Mike Bodell publish an article on the subject entitled "The Finish Line for Your Phono Cartridge." Mike, who is a geologist by training, found that his cartridge was beginning to exhibit signs of wear at far fewer hours than those claimed by the manufacturer, which led him to explore the subject extensively, starting with Harold Weiler’s seminal paper from 1954. Mike updated Weiler’s work based on what he was able to learn, including discussions with manufacturers and retippers and a search of the literature. He also had help from Ray Parkhurst, who not only did the photomacrographs for the article, but in a thread on the Hoffman forum, did a real time test of wear using a lower stylus force than I am accustomed to-- interestingly, Ray’s real life tests showed very little wear at 1,000 hours, when Mike’s expectation based on the data should have revealed otherwise. (I think part of it may be stylus pressure- remember when the ultra light stylus force designs were all the rage? Maybe they had something there). I guess the main take away is that the multiple thousand hours claimed by some manufacturers is probably the outside limit.
One user on the Hoffman forum said he had been running a cartridge for years without any noticeable wear. But, once he finally convinced himself to have it inspected, it turned out that it was worn (I think it was a London Decca) and had it redone by the manufacturer. The user reported that he had not realized how much gradual degradation occurs over time that you don’t really notice. (I find the same with tubes).
The other take away for me was to keep track using a tally counter. It isn’t a big deal to click the counter each time you play a side- this is "rough" approximation, not scientifically exact, but gives you some idea of how many hours of play are on the stylus. You might find the Bodell article or the Hoffman thread of interest if you curious about the subject. (I like working on these projects with specialist authors and always learn something).

Dear @whart  : Years ago Ortofon made it its own research about and the results showed that a good stylus tip starts to have signs of playing degradation at early as 500 hours even that the lisrteners can't be aware of any single anomaly down there through the LP play, in that same research found out that close to 1K playing hours sympthoms  srarted listenable.

""  I think part of it may be stylus pressure- remember when the ultra light stylus force designs were all the rage? Maybe they had something there). ""

Not exactly because the VTF is determined by the overall cartridge designs where are involved the cartridge weigth, compliance and that coils been centered.

Some cartridges as the SPU needs high VTF figures ( not all models. ) but all is perfectly calculated by the designer not only in the SPU cartridges but in any cartridge for the playing hours the designer has as the cartridge design target about with out gone in detriment of accelerated stylus tip degradation or LP surface degradations.

Of course I can be wrong but that is what I remember and learned through reading designer point of views on that regards.

R.

The user reported that he had not realized how much gradual degradation occurs over time that you don’t really notice.

This is why it’s important to have more than one cartridge (or additional stylus in case with MM/MI) so you can compare used and almost unused sample.

The OP has the most advanced modern profiles in the history - The Replicant 100 

it's like car shock absorbers, you travel miles and miles getting used to driving and slow but inexorable wear and you don't notice it until the car begins to skid more and more with the passage of time.

I have been away for a while and am sorry that I missed this discussion last week.  I have a Wild-Herrbrugg M5 microscope, (actually I also have an M3), and use it religiously to check for wear on my stylii.  Wild-Herrbrugg has been absorbed into Leica, but is still very much in business and these microscopes, especially the M5 are the cats meow for our purposes.  We used one for years to check the condition of stylii for our customers when I worked in retail.  McIntosh encouraged their dealers to have an M5.  Audio Technica encouraged their dealers to have an M3.  These instruments are old fashioned, optical bi-focal microscopes.  Too expensive by today's standards I suppose, but I am used to using them and and fortunate to have them.  I wish there was a way to share them with you.