Stylus cleaning: tools, fluids, techniques?

Plain H2O. And I mean pure, *demineralized* water, the universal solvent...

I find it a bit surprising that so many have still not heard of the Record Research "stuff". Maybe because I live very close to the source, the word got here sooner.

I have found that the record cleaning solutions from RR are vastly superior to most all other products, including LAST. As for the stylus cleaner, I find LAST and RR to be equal, though I haven't done microscopic analysis on which to base this claim. The LAST stylus brush is great. I wouldn't think one could go wrong with either of these products.

The polymer based cleaners do not have to be petroleum based (nylon socks are petroleum based, but probably didn't affect human health). There are many other non-petroleum checmicals. However, most of the liquid cleaners are solvent based. Solvent will 'dissolve' things faster than any polymer, just the evaporative action of pure 100% alcohol is very powerful action.

Of course water and brush are the 'purest', will do no damage, but will also hardly clean.

However, I have never seen any stylus fallen off because of either solvent-based or polymer cleaner. However, a lot of dirty coils from capilary action (i.e. the hollow boron cantilever wicks up the liquid, while the dust particles 'kicked off' by the stylus hit the moist coil and stays there.)

The other physics against the liquid/brush cleaner is the fact that the brushing strokes by human finger many times stronger than that of tracking force, and this really will impact the logetivity of the cantilever/suspension. On the other hand, Newton already proved that the force applied by polymer has to be exactly equal to the tracking force set on the tonearm.

I did encounter many sad owners of premature moving coil cartridge failure from prematured cantilever suspension collapsed after only 1 year of active use + vigorously cleaning with brush/liquid.

The 'purity' of our polymer based cleaner can be easily proven, just smear some polymer on a clean mirror surface, and rub it off, there will be no residue, no grease left on the mirror surface.

Extremephono products are tested with almost every top tier cartridge, including the $10000 Clearaudio Insider.

Record Research fluid is distributed by the same people that import the Benz, Clear Audio and Koetsu cartridge lines.

I seriously doubt they sell a product that puts all these cartridges in harms way.

I see so many negative comments on forums that suggest the worst case scenario without knowing the facts. I'm glad extremephono wrote back. I've got several friends using them on their Benz, Lydian and ZYX cartridges. (Premature collapse-it's known as cantilever fatigue and effects some cartridges more than others. I've had three Dynavectors which had suspension assemblies freeze up/harden and one with cantilever collapse from 1980 to 1992. Since then, only Lyra's which have superior suspensions).