Should I Brush My Cartridge After Each Use?

Ultrakaz,

Thanks for the tip on the KOS. I don't know if smaller pores would clean better, but they might reduce the risk of snagging the stylus.

Piedpiper,

We're on the same page re: the lazy, hazy, crazy Roy. Wire doesn't matter. VTA/SRA changes aren't audible. Scraping dirt against a plastic groovewall with a diamond chisel at hundreds of psi will magically clean the groove without damaging the plastic. As you said, whatever floats your boat.

Two seconds of ME (or KOS) after each side is enough to prevent all buildup, but it's nowhere near abrasive enough to damage a diamond - as Swampwalker pointed out. In fact, if a stylus is neglected and the buildup gets thick/stubborn enough, the ME won't even remove that.

Just last week I saved a ZYX UNIverse that hadn't been cleaned in a year. It sounded horrible and the owner was worried the cartridge was toast. The ME wasn't aggressive enough to remove all the baked on crud so I resorted to Linn's trick, a few delicate swipes with a sliver of 2,000 grit silicone carbide paper. Voila! Stylus looks like new, cartridge sounds like new.

As Jeff Jones said, you do what you have to do. For emergency rehabs a little tough love Linn style works wonders, and so does single malt!

Do I brush the cart or my teeth with the single malt????

Hi folks,

So the Magic "Green" Linn paper has always bothered me (I know it works - I don't dispute that in the slightest; I've used it for years in an emergency capacity, and have seen the before and after results under a scope).

How can the relatively flat surface profile of a piece of 2000-grit sandpaper possibly clean a chisel-shaped sliver of diamond? While I can see this working well on a spherical or elliptical stylus profile, I have a much harder time wrapping my head around how any of the thin, tapering profiles (line-contact et al) can be so well-cleaned by the green paper - after all, aren't we merely grazing the very tip of the stylus? It is not as if we were wrapping the sandpaper around the diamond itself, ala a good shoe-shine. While I tend to believe the surface of the abrasive material deforms slightly under pressure, I don't think it does so enough to catch the "sides" of the diamond itself (maybe I'm wrong). Yet, the diamond comes out looking all spiffy and new, with the baked-on gunk that accumulates at the cantelever/stylus bonding point completely expunged....Any thoughts on this?

Personally, I drink the single malt then lick the cartridge but I'm into piercings too.

I use stylast and the little brush that comes with it. I use it when I can see grunge (or "gradois" pronounced Grah-Doo -- it's a New Orleans word) on the stylus. I also sometimes hear a dirty stylus -- but I can only tell the difference on records I'm very familiar with.

I'd say this happens about every ten records.

As for the parts of this thread about vinyl being work/worth the work -- it's fine to be all anal about each dust speck if that floats your boat, and there are times when I do the whole wet-dry-vacuum-sweep-blowdry-fluff-and-fold, and then there are times when the prospect pushes me toward cd's. When that latter event happens, I recall my blissful teen years of loving music and not caring about every snap, crackle and pop (and also taking dust gobs off my old Dual with my fingers) and I play the record all dirty and nasty. Embrace your inner schizophrenic and do what feels right at the moment. If you have to scrub up like a surgeon every time you want to hear a record, and it takes longer to prepare to listen that to listen, my guess is that you will spend an awful lot of your listening time alone and listening only to a record vacuum.