How long does a stylus last?

Eldaford. Interesting analogy on stylus wear. I usually rejig my Et-2 tonearm at 6 month intervals to clean the air bearing and then would inspect the stylus under a microscope at the same time. After approximately 200 hours of use there was no sign of wear on the diamond. Even at 3000 hours the wear on the diamond was negligeable. The koetsu cartridges will require a rebuild mainly due to stylus fatigue long before the diamond is worn. Stuart... the rebuilds by Koetsu[Japan] are typically a 3 to 4 month time frame. I rebuilt my rosewood [for the second time] about 1 1/2 years ago.After reading all the praise and accolades heaped on the Shelter 501 at that time, I purchased a new Shelter 501 to tide me over while my koetsu was in Japan.I could appreciate it's stellar performance but, as good as the shelter is... it aint a koetsu!It's hard to describe the magic of Koetsu. Anxiety got the better of me. I missed my beloved koetsu so much I sold the Shelter, broke down and bought another rosewood. Didn't lose much on the deal as the 501's were selling like hotcakes at the time. If you can find a used one from someone you can trust... go for it... you will never regret it.Every music loving vinyl junkie should experience a koetsu at least once in their lifetime.

Ecclectique...Because your observations are based on inspection with a microscope, I tend to believe you. The wear that I recall seeing was with less than the 5 gram VTF that Elizabeth suggests.

For reasons I suggest, (1) line contact stylus. (2) lower tracking force..1.5 gram or less. (3) Low stylus mass MC. (4) Very clean LPs.

Hey! This is good news for a change.

Eldartford. Yes,I would think clean records would be the primary factor here. On the other hand, I remember inspecting many friends cartridges on the microscope over the years and have seen a some real doosies,some with very low hours as well. My father in laws shure v15 with probably less than 300 hours on it was so far gone I couln't even clean the burnt carbon deposits off of the diamond! He used an old stacking dual table,filthy records and never cleaned the stylus.Thought that was the function of the little dust paddle on the shure. At the time I was using linn sondek with a sonus blue [anyone remember it?]mounted in a black widow. The sonus stylus was so compliant one was very fortunate to get even 100 hours on it before it collapsed. Never forget my him ragging on me about that one.....though the ragging stopped pretty fast once he saw his stylus magnified 100x.

...and the bottom line is that no cartridge has an "odometer" and you certainly never know how many hours it served especially when you're buying it through the internet.