Question on Cardas Frequency Sweep & burn in LP

Hello Nolitan,

About 2-1/2 to 3 years ago, I posed some similar questions to Doug Deacon about this record. Not so much about how long I could, or should use it, but was it a worthy tool to even use at all?

I had the older Cardas LP, and had just bought the newer issue, and had a brand new Benz Ruby 3, that was sounding like fingernails on a chaulkboard when first mounting, setting up, and listening to it.

As many of you know, Doug is the sort of fella who is usually not on the fence about anything pertaining to analog, that he's knowledgeable, and a voice of common sense wisdom.

Doug said, "Hey, you could try it, and see if you get an improvement"?, but as he wisely said, "why would you want to rack up hours, and hours playing nothing, when you could be playing-enjoying music!?"

He added, that that is part of the fun of getting a new cartridge, to hear the changes that occur during break in.
He added, that things such as this are also a learning experience.

I did try the three tracks on the Ruby 3, which was about 3 hours old, at exactly 20 minutes per track, and after that combined one hour of play time on these tracks, noted absolutely no difference in sound in my particular instance with this Ruby 3 Cartridge.

So, at that point, I had to agree with what Doug wisely told me, back in the Sleeve the Cardas Test Record went, and decided to play nothing but my clean records.

Yes, it was a worrysome affair for the first few hours, as I thought this Ruby 3 was never going to sound good, and was leaning towards believing I had gotten a defective Cartridge.

Then, at about the 5-7 hour mark, the Cartridge magically began to open up, and fill out. The pleasing changes were not at all subtle, with the Ruby 3 really beginning to show lucious midrange purity-coherence, then bass was becoming much more authoritive, Cymbals, started sounding like Cymbals, etc.

I just wanted to convey this little experience I had. I concluded that Doug had the right idea. Looking back, I do believe he was 100% right with his advice.

The Cardas LP is said to be made of a harder vinyl formulation if that's of any help. Mark

Mark beat me to it about the hard vinyl on the Cardas LP. BTW, 5 -7 hours seems a very short time for a new cartridge to even begin opening up! About 25 hours has been the minimum in my experience.

As for using a sweep frequency band, such as on the Cardas LP, to break in a cartridge: no, that's a waste of time I agree. All a cartridge needs for break-in is repeated flexing of the suspension to "limber it up"; and any records with a good range of frequencies in the music signal (especially bass) will do.

A little known, but very important (IMO) break-in tip/refinement, especially for low-compliance MC cartridges with stiff(er) suspensions: I always break them in (for the first 50 - 80 hours) with the VTF set at about .2 to .25 gms over the manufacturer's max recommended VTF. Why? Because it's very likely that in normal use (especially with MC's) you will be tracking at or near the high end of the recommended VTF range. So you want to insure that the suspension's AFTER break-in elasticity ("Q" or "K") will extend uniformly/smoothly a little PAST the optimum VTF point you've determined for best sonics, tracking, etc. You DO NOT want the suspension (after break-in) to have two different "Q"s right across the "cusp" of your optimum VTF! Don't worry, adding a little bit of "English" like this during the initial break-in will damage neither cartridge or records. In fact, if you didn't use this little "pre-stress" technique with your MC cartridge when it was new, you can do it any time afterward, and you will get much more stable performance in the future.

The frequency sweep track on many test records while not necessary for cartridge break-in, can be quite useful for cartridge maintenance IMO. While I don't think demagnetizing is an appropriate application for any of the three main cartridges designs (what's to get magnetized??), the process could cause damage, especially to the tiny magnets of MM and MI cartridges. Some demagnetizers (and even some phono-preamps) have also been known to fry the coils of more delicate MC cartridges, such as Jan Allaert's.

On the other hand, running a full-frequency-range sweep signal (especially the very high frequencies) a couple of times through a MC cartridge every one or two dozen plays can help keep the metal coils' crystalline structure uniformly oriented and packed together at the molecular level (similar, though not as completely as cryo treatment.) This will allow more(?) output from the coils, although you may not notice it ;--) And it may or may not 'freshen-up' the coil armature too, depending what it's made of.
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Hi Mark,

Should I thank you or shoot you? I'm on the fence... ;-)

From the quotes above it appears that technically I did not offer advice. I asked two questions and challenged you to decide for yourself. Whether you displayed your normal good sense or ran that Ruby 3 over those tracks for 1,000 hours, I couldn't be blamed!

I remember when you reported that it had settled in nicely. That initial description didn't sound like any Benz I'd ever heard.

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So Nolitan,

Why would you want to play noise when you could be playing music?

- if your answer is, "I guess I wouldn't", then the differences between the tracks becomes moot. "Enjoy music, tolerate equipment" (Nick Doshi}.

- if your answer is, "To hell with that; my cartridge sounds like crap, I bought this record and I'm going to use it", then despite Mark's misguided confidence I also have no idea which track's best for shortening the life span - oops! - I mean breaking in the suspension of a cartridge.

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FWIW, I did once use both the horizontally and vertically modulated tracks to break in a friend's cartridge. It was very shrieky and we didn't much like its sound even after break in. I figured the faster I broke it down - I mean IN - the sooner he'd replace it. ;-)

Doug's sense of humor has definitely evolved to a new level! ;--)
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