Are There Any Risks to Your Stylus From Using Magic Eraser
I guess I'm late to the magic eraser discovery.
I read a blog
about sibilance, and it was suggested that cleaning your stylus with
magic eraser, cleans so well that sibilance issues can be greatly
minimized.......assuming all other factors have been optimized (SRA
etc.).
However, someone mentioned that the magic eraser fibers grabbed onto the cantilever and damaged their cartridge.
I
clean all my LP's before playing and use a Zerostat. It cleans the
stylus "OK" but "if" the magic eraser is safe and provides better stylus
cleaning, I would really like to try it.
A couple dips, no swiping, and finish with the stylus brush to remove any stray fibers. Been doing this for years. Blue Tack works too(I believe Soundsmith recommended)
More effective than those overpriced sticky gel pad thingies. I bought one of the Zero dust. Waste of money. $5.00 for a lifetime supply of Magic Eraser. It keeps the bathtub and kitchen sink looking great too!
Don't listen to ebm, he's Mr. negative. Magic Eraser works very well but only if you dip gently and slowly both ways, up & down. Cut a chunk of it up and place it between the platter and the arm rest. Put it under the arc of the stylus swing from the arm rest to the record surface where you can lower the arm, using the cueing lever only, slowly. I dip it twice and then give the stylus a brush with Stylast. Been doing this for years.
Lol I’ve used it on my Koetsus over 3 years no problem. I don’t just dip and lift either. I dip into a corner of a cut wedge and carefully rotate back and forth a bit to “scrub”. Sometimes I even add a drop of water. Yes, even on my Blue Lace Diamond. Don’t forget to brush (long bristle brush) up and down the cantilever and front yoke too to keep your cartridge from getting a beard. Maybe a bit bold, but audiophiles are way too timid about cleaning the things properly, and even then every month there’s a sob story post about the house cleaner killing it anyways!
First of all, sibilance is due to boosted frequency's between 2500 and 4000Hz. Instruments like female voices and violins have a lot of output here. Cutting those frequency's just 2 or 3 dB smooths things out beautifully. A dirty stylus when it gets bad enough causes miss tracking. Any stylus cleaning method can damage the stylus if used aggressively. Most methods just remove the lint. If there is any "gunk" on there it will require a solvent. A Zerostat does not work. It is an unfortunate waste of money. Yes it will temporarily remove static but as soon as you put that stylus down in the groove you generate thousands of volts in just a few minutes. Then if you are not using a dust cover the record attracts dust like a magnet and you wind up with a filthy stylus. You have to discharge the record while it is playing using a conductive sweep arm which also removes any incidental dust. Use a dust cover also and you will hardly ever have to clean your stylus.
Way too many timid mice around as far as dealing with stylus cleaning. I have been cleaning my styli with combinations of ME, Onzow and brush for as long as I can remember and quite vigorously to boot. Never broken anything yet..... (touch wood) As long as you are not a total cak handed clutz you can get pretty enthusiastic with cleaning even on more expensive carts. My collection includes Koetsu Black Goldline, Scheu SL, Ortofon Black Cadenza etc.
Noromance, that is all marketing crap like "jitter" All that stuff just causes tracking distortion which is not sibilance. Sibilance can occur with any program source including all digital sources and it has to do with our ears sensitivity in that frequency band. I can erase it immediately with a 3 dB notch filter centered on 3000 Hz. If you had the ability to digitally modify the frequency response of your system at will you would know this to be true. I have that ability and can demonstrate this to anyone in a heart beat. Also I am not trying to sell anything to anybody and because I no longer work in the industry I do not have to be politically correct. I revel in being politically incorrect. Soundsmith unfortunately persists in perpetrating a lot of mythology which is probably the major reason I don't have one of their cartridges.
I use Last stylus cleaner. Less is more. About one application for every 15 to 20 Lp's. Use soft stylus brush on all cleaning in between. Small bottle of this lasts a long time. Have had mine for over 20 years.
I have been using ME for years on all my carts, including the one in my avatar. I have never thought it was going to do any harm to my carts, as long as you go up and down ONLY. You start going sideways and dragging the stylus across the ME surface your asking for trouble. I also do not press down, I let the weight of the cart do the cleaning, 2-3 dunks is all that's needed. I then look at stylus thru jewelers loupe and see nice bright shiny diamond tip. I also use my dust cover.....every house has dust flying around.
Ditto for catcher10. I would not recommend "scrubbing", or any horizontal movement of the stylus, while it is in contact with ME. Up and down only. I happen to own a lab grade microscope, and I inspected a few styli before and after ME, using only up and down contact. It works. Someone recently informed me privately that Peter Ledermann frowns upon ME because he has seen some styli that have acquired shmutz from the ME, thereby causing aberrant wear and audio distortions. I would be interested to know how ME was used in those cases, but I do take PL seriously.
And you don't think you get schmutz on the front sides of the stylus? Wiping the stylus from back to front will remove all the lint and if your records and playback method are pristine that is all you need to do if you see lint on the stylus. However if you records were exposed over time to cigarette or other smoke, cooking fumes or pollution like in LA, the stylus will collect a layer of tar. If you look under a microscope what you see s a ball of schmutz with two opposing shiny slits at the tip which are the contact patches. A brush might remove a little of this but far from all. Last stylus cleaner is the same chlorofluorocarbon (Freon) they use as a record preservative (which it is not). It is a great solvent and will clean the stylus (and records) nicely. I would use an artist's brush. Nice and soft. If you want to save a lot of money just get a can of fluorinated brake cleaning fluid, basically the same stuff. Regardless of what someone is about to say it will not hurt anything. You could easily use Last Stylus cleaner to clean your brakes. Same stuff. As always the best way to keep our records and stylus clean is don't let them get dirty in the first place. Now, no matter how good you are at this occasionally some lint is going to get caught on your stylus which you can see and wipe off. By the time you can see the schmutz it is late in the game and you are spreading it to your records where it is coming from anyway and you have a mess. Do not let people smoke, cook or live in LA near your records. If you are going to buy used records you need an ultrasonic record cleaner with a little more than distilled water in it say just a tsp of Triton X-100 and a tsp of alkyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride 1:750 (benzalkonium cloride) to kill the fungus.
Most of us M.E. users also use it in conjunction with brushes and/or gel cleaners - all 3 in my case (I have both the Onzow and DS Audio gels). There is no "schmutz" to be accumulated unless you’re doing this totally wrong. Long bristle brushes should be used at multiple angles/approaches, and up & around the cantilever too. Use your head, guys. And if you rotate-scrub correctly with the M.E. it never exceeds or even approaches the lateral/snag forces your stylus already sees by say, being cued into a lead-in groove or running into the end of a lead-out (the M.E. is far more compliant than a vinyl groove too, so it absorbs a lot of any lateral forces). The fear mongering over this stuff is hilarious to see.
Styli can fall out on their own due to normal use. It’s part of the wear and tear inherent to vinyl playback, combined with sometimes less than decent designs & implementations (or a bad sample). I posit that if an M.E. or gel cleaner eats a stylus from a simple dip, then it wasn’t the M.E. or gel’s fault. It was caused by a defective cartridge or prior damage, finally manifesting in failure. That stylus was likely a GONER anyways on the next LP. So anecdotal tales of M.E. / Onzow eating a stylus are only good for an "lol" reaction for me.
Think it's just you and me Mulveling. Likewise I still use Onzow and brushes and Last fluid. I'm more likely to damage a stylus or cantilever when swapping carts than using ME.
Think it’s just you and me Mulveling. Likewise I still use Onzow and brushes and Last fluid. I’m more likely to damage a stylus or cantilever when swapping carts than using ME.
@uberwaltz Yep looks that way. Thanks dude. And I agree - sadly, at the end of the day our own fingers / hands / clothing / girlfriends / wives / house cleaners pose BY FAR the biggest risk of early death to our beloved (and expensive) cartridges :( A truly rigorous cleaning regimen is BY FAR a net positive in my book.
I hear you on swapping carts. I love arms with head shells / wands, and have many head shells to try and limit the mounting / un-mounting cycles on my cartridges. Plus it’s a lot easier to safely mount on a head shell or wand on a large flat working area, rather than trying to bugger with a fixed arm mounted on the turntable.
I only recently got a table with an arm with removable Headshell and bugger what the purists say about minimizing signal connection it’s the only way to fly imho now. Think I now have 7 Headshell with carts mounted and aligned ready to go with just a bit of fiddling with vtf and vta .
But then I also have a Rega...... But plans for that are just to mount a 2M mono and be done.
Like I said, there is always one favorite one. The others just sit in the drawer.
A few months ago I would have said, what a waste but...... I mounted my older Scheu Analog SL and must have found that sometimes elusive sweet spot of sra that has made we extremely reluctant to take it off again..... lol. This means there are much more expensive carts sitting on headshells in my headshell keeper just looking purty. Not gathering dust as that would be a very bad thing.......
My point was DO NOT WIPE or "scrub" or rotate with ME. Wipe with a brush or some other tool that is made for that purpose, but not with ME. Just up and down with ME. Otherwise, I'm out.
...I remembered why they called her the 'Magic E-raiser' when she leaned suggestively, turning the tables, saying "Here...let me clean that nasty, dirty stylus of yours...."
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