Build-up on stylus - any new cures?

@mixermarkwillams 
Is the snowball that you reference with the needle peaking thru possibly the adhesive that is used to attach the needle to the cantilever?
My cartridge looks like that also and it’s the adhesive holding the needle in place. I’ll put my cartridge under a microscope later to re-verify that is what it is.

Thanks, but no, it is clearly a buildup of some sort. The 2014 thread about this noted that vinyl shed from records looks like this and consists of short rods in shape.

My listening tastes are not very mainstream. Some of the pressings I listen to are musically on the fringe in various directions and sometimes not the best pressings.

Some also are from the mid-late 1970s when the oil embargo led to high percentages of recycled vinyl from returned or scrapped records. At first some of those pressings not only blended crunched up vinyl from random sources, but sometimes included bits of label from the scrapped pressings. A machine was created to punch out the center of scrapped records to avoid pollution in the slurry from bits of old labels, but it was not a good time for vinyl quality in independent pressings. This deposit on my cantilever could have come from a particular disc that I hope to identify at some point.

mixermarkwilliams

This deposit on my cantilever could have come from a particular disc that I hope to identify at some point.

Most likely it was accumulation over time from multiple records. What are you using to clean your LPs?

A combination of LP9 or alcohol in conjunction with dipping in Magic Eraser should take care of the problem 

Thanks, I'll add LP9 to my growing collection of stylus cleaning stuff, I appreciate it.
As to what I use for cleaning, it's the humble Spin-Clean. I always use the prescribed amount of surfactant, not washing a record until it seems well distributed in the distilled water. I suppose it could be leaving deposits on the discs, though I haven't seen any mention of this before.