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Record Damage and Conical and Shibata Styluses

I have some interesting information for people to consider who have been having problems with crackly or clicky playback of their vinyl records.I have been looking at the U.S Patent for the original Shibata stylus profile.Here I quote fom the text "...When this(standard) elliptical stylus is placed in a record groove...the area of the above mentioned contact surface figure becomes small.For this reason,the elliptical stylus can easily bite into the groove walls(plus heat!)....the parts of the groove walls with small waveform undulations are particularly subject to severe damage,whereby the signal to noise ratio of the reproduced signals becomes small." should we all quickly change over to conical and shibata styluses?
stefanl
raquel
841 posts
 
The Shibata was developed for RCA's quadrophonic program ("CD 4") in the early 70's, as they needed a sharp stylus that could track the then-very high frequency 30 kHz. carrier signal that held the musical information for the back two channels.

The Shibata is not dead. The Grado Reference (the $1,200 model) and new Shibui (a highly modded Denon DL 103R) both use a Shibata, I believe, as do many other cartridges.

I have a van den Hul Frog, and am not certain that the care required to set azimuth and VTA with a Shibata / line-contact stylus is worth it. I'm all for vinyl, and don't mind cleaning records or getting off my ass to pick up the arm at the end of a record, but what a pain it is to dial these things in.

Hi, Tom. Hope you're well.
stefanl OP
296 posts
 
Was RCA connected to the Victor Co. of Japan Ltd. because the U.S patent states that they are the assignee and Norio Shibata the inventor?From what I have researched,it is worth spending the time to align a Shibata type stylus correctly as it will be rewarding.
theaudiotweak
2,801 posts
 
JVC or Japan Victor Corporation were one in the same. The Victor comes from RCA. JVC in the late 60's and up was an R/D arm for many companies including RCA and Panasonic. Seed money came from both of these players.Tom
raquel
841 posts
 
RCA was evidently a subsidiary of JVC:

"RCA was one of the first companies to release quadraphonic product in the United States with it's line of Quadraphonic 8-Track cartridges. (These early "quad-8" tapes can be distinguished from the more common RCA Q8's by their orange colored graphics and solid cardboard album graphic sleeves.) The reason for getting these tapes issued early was to insure that RCA quad product was out into the marketplace while their parent company in Japan (JVC) completed work on perfecting their new CD-4 discrete system for quadraphonic record albums. Early CD-4 LPs released in Japan were suffering from excessive wear and tear. Many of these LPs deteriorated after being played just a few times. This caused JVC to announce at that time that their CD-4 discs should only be played on their specially equipped systems. This problem hastened the development of the "Shibata" stylus, which increased the surface area of the stylus, thus decreasing the pressure on the grooves. With a new improved vinyl and the Shibata stylus, RCA was now ready to introduce the Quadradisc to the American publiv [sic]."

Source: http://www.quadraphonicquad.com/rca_page.htm
stefanl OP
296 posts
 
There is still some guy in the States who used to work for Audio-Technica making his own CD-4 Shibata cartridge and selling them to people who still maintain a quadrophonic collection.I e-mailed him about their suitabilty for stereo playback and as I thought,he said that would be well within the cartridge's capabilties.
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