best way to clean Grado Sonata

The pressure on the tip even tracking at one gram is, in terms of PSI unthinkable, which generates some heat at the stylus, and even if you try to keep your records clean and are cleaning the diamond each side I would think you may still get some sort of baked on "crud" build up possible. I have worried myself about some of the solvent based fluids screwing up the suspension or even loosening the adhesive that holds the tip on. You really need a quality microscope to know if you have no gunk on that tiny diamond surface. I looked at "needles" under an expensive Swiss scope for years that people brought in from their "record players" and some of them looked like the villan in a sci-fi space movie under that thing, with all the crap you can imagine glued to it.Hard to imagine that they played at all! It seems like distilled water would be harmless and help get rid of some small amounts of build up, but I may be wrong. If you don't have a wet vac record cleaner or some good method of removing the mold release agents from your records before you play them, that alone can leave a film of schmooze on the tip. Their IS stuff on your diamond you can't see by just looking at it I assure you. This is a good discussion and good a good cleaning "ritual" will go along way to keeping everything working well and sounding good.

Linn used to hand out matchbooks I am told with their logo on it as stylus cleaner given that your stylus was well made and they knew theis were.Try 300 grit paper.Or Extremphono has a gel which is much cheaper than the one recently favorably mentioned by Fremmer in Stereophile for something like $75.Gel compound that you just drop arm onto.Ask Casey here on 'Gon or go to his web site www.extremephono.com

As a designer of Extreme Solid State Cleaner (TM), I like to clarify a few things.

Do note that stylus (diamond tip) mounted to the cantilever via 2 methods. One is a hole, and diamond mounts in, the other way is a fork that clamps the diamond. Both method are typically reinforced with adhesive.

Liquid cleaner may weanken the adhesive over time. If the manufacturer recommends against it, perhaps their adhesive has some weakness towards certain kind of solvent. However, even when the adhesive is totally lost, the diamond may not fall off the cantilever, due to mechanical attachment. However, I don't think this is the best way to treat cartridge, especially something mightily expensive.

In addition, most of the better cantilevers are hollow. So liquid cleaner will go up via the tube as a result of capillary action. In most instance, it will just gum up the inside. If anyone opens up their cartridge after a few years, you'll see the inside fairly dusty. The sound slowly degrades over time because the coil is damped by the attachment of foreign substances, as well as added mass. Lost of detail and degraded frequency extension.

As of Zeordust, the main complaint I have is that it only works when new, and after the first wash, the adhesive quality is compromised. Also, the form factor is rather tall and quite impossible to use if the tonearm/record surface has limited clearance. Of course the cost is quite ridulous too.

www.extremephono.com

I used to clean my stylus with a matchbox but always worried that little particles of grit may stick to the stylus and thus wreak havoc in the grooves over time.

Then my dealer suggested cleaning with the bare skin on my finger - just place your finger under the stylus and move finger forward in a smooth motion with very light pressure. I never became comfortable with this method either so now I just use the Stylus cleaner by Last (fluid applied via nail polish brush).