How long does a stylus last?

Viridian. You have a point however, inspecting a used sylus under a scope will tell you a great deal about it's use or misuse. Styli that are not regularly cleaned or used on uncleaned vinyl will surely suffer a premature fate long before those that are cleaned regularly, not to mention mis-alignment, improper tracking force,overhang or azimuth. Perhaps this is how you arrived at a 1000 hour average or are you speaking about your own personal experience. While I would concurr with 4000 to 5000 hours being very optimistic or even unrealistic....one should easily get more than twice your guesstimate if proper maintenance and cleaning proceedures are excercized. My good friends 11 year old shure v15 mr sounds teriffic and still tracks like a champ.

Hey Marty. Well said,and your educated guess may even be much lower if one factors in all the variables in the real world. Hell,once upon a time I tore the sylus off a brand new denon 103d while cleaning the record with a brush! Cartridge life averaged out to be a big fat "ZERO" hours!!!!!! Lost a couple of good nights sleep over that one.

Marakanetz...Hey! Neat idea for a stylus odometer. All you would really need is a timer (such as commonly used on machinery) wired up to the TT motor. Cost would be about $15, but with Cryo treatment it would sell to the vinyl crowd for $200 easy :-)