The he question is at what point do you replace the DC? After your listening session or during play?
Some thoughts on dust covers
Over the course of time there have been many discussions concerning the subject of dust covers. They tend to revolve around the central question: Should the dust cover be down or up while playing records? Some of these discussions have been nasty, consequently I have refrained from participation. It is hoped that I can provide some common sense that was given to me by someone of unquestioned authority many years ago. During college and after, from 1970 to ~1980 I worked in HiFi retail, selling high end lines of audio equipment. One of these lines was Thorens. Sometime around 1977 or 1978, if memory serves, Thorens introduced their new TD126, as a top of the line TT with their own arm and I sold the first one at our store to very good customer. He came back very unhappy after the first night of frustration with it. The problem was that with the dust cover closed some of his favorite records were hitting tangentally on the very back were the platter came closest to the dust cover when it was in the closed position. I called the manufacturer's rep and he set up a three cornered phone call with himself, the Chief Engineer of Thorens at the time, and me. I don't recall the man's name, but it doesn't matter, it is what he said that matters, then and now. The Chief Engineer explained that the problem was caused because the hole in the offending records was slightly off center so there was an eccentricity as such a record rotates about the spindle. The solution was simplicity itself, the dust cover should be removed always when playing records. That the intent of the cover is to protect the turntable when not in use. I pointed out that we lived in a semi-arrid environment (San Diego, CA) which is dusty to which he replied that if the environment was too dusty for records it should also be considered unhealthy for people to be breathing the air. He recommended are filtration, not dust covers to address environmental concerns. The rep asked about air bourne feedback from speakers and the Thorens guy laughed and said that if that was a problem in a given system, relying of the dust cover was a very flimsy and ineffective solution and that proper measures should be instituted to provide meaningful distance and isolation to ameliorate the problem. So the often offered extremes: a) Always play your records with the dust cover down, or b) put the dust cover away in it's box and never use it, should both be recognized for what they are are - not solutions at all. First principles: Identify the problem(s), seek solutions and alternatives, prioritize.
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Hate to let facts get in the way of a good stouch, but if I may refer back to the excellent 192-page paper Precision Aqueous Cleaning of Vinyl Records PACVR-3rd-Edition, it references the ARSC Guide to Audio Preservation, 2015, which was commissioned by the Library of Congress. I quote:
We know a fair bit about wool fibres Down Under. They are indeed covered in a greasy coating of lanolin, which we extract and sell at inflated prices for cosmetics. The crimp (curliness) and thickness affect the prices fetched for wool, as do the impurities. Thickness is measured in microns and the finest wool gets down to about 12 microns which just happens to be a critical size for sub-microscopic dust particles trapped in a record groove!
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Wow! Really $60! I posted earlier about an acrylic platter you can buy on Amazon for $20. It doesn't have fancy handles (I've never needed) but it does the job nicely. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01NAHMUFW You can treat me to a double IPA for that $40 I just saved you. :)
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Heh, I'm a bad boy! I've repurposed one of my WallyTools cartridge-alignment tools (which are essential IMHO) that is shaped like a quarter-inch-thick LP. It's a perfect fit on top of my platter. No need for a dust cover, although I realize that some tables and arms need to be completely covered. But if yours doesn't... |
noromance hope no lasting effects, thank goodness for the weaker strains and the vaccines, Donna and I just dodged Covid, stayed with my brother in Maine for 3 days, he found his ’cold’ was Covid, we both tested neg. We flew to Tampa in Oct., we were the ONLY people wearing masks in two large airports, and everywhere we went on the 5 day trip home. I keep hearing "there’s a lot" of Covid out there. |
@elliottbnewcombjr I have never had such issues with the Clearaudio ring on my Clearaudio tables (Ovation, Innovation). I have used Clearaudio, Dynavector and Lyra cartridges. There is maybe a 1mm lip at the record's edge on the ring, but my cartridges all clear that just fine. |
dwettenice. I also found, the clearance between the top of the metal ring and the bottom of the cartridge body is an issue, my AT33PTGII, I had to skip the beginning of track 1, because the cartridge body rubbed on the metal ring. |
May I suggest that any cover can be easily and reversibly damped with self-stick paddleball weights. I have been using these successfully to damp the horns on my Cornwall 4’s on the outside surfaces because the black painted weights disappear on the black plastic horns, and you don’t get caught up in unscrewing and re-screwing the horns with the tuning process if you are damping from the inside of the horns. Of course, a TT dust cover can also be damped with weighted whatevers. The beauty of the paddleball weights though is that they are slim in profile, so they would not be interfering with the handling of the TT cover if it was an unhinged loose cover. |
wonderful to learn the word, a bit more from AI (numbers didn’t copy properly) AI Overview An undecillion is a number that is written as 1 followed by 36 zeros in the United States and 66 zeros in Great Britain. It is a very large number, so it is not used often. Explanation
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@elliottbnewcombjr Apologies for not replying to your post. I had asked about the layout of your room. You were kind enough to answer in depth including photos of the space. At the time, I had a 2 week dose of coronavirus, and neglected to follow up due to the brain fog. |
DUST and all that! Yes there is so much on the internet about dust! Most comments on here and debates describe the problems of household air contamination. Within the original post the hi-fi element of turntable covers was the question…dust or sound constraints! One thing that there has been no real quantitative answer to is, what is the shed skin % Shed skin may not be a big percentage overall but it would certainly be one of the highest individual components. Perhaps one other high pollutant should be an added element to the debate controversial or not…. Smoking could be the biggest additional problem as by smoking habitually, intentionally (or not) adds to the mix arguably the worst pollutants of all into the living environment. Various dangerous chemical particulates and sticky nicotine just love records, electrical equipment and other clean surfaces. If you have ever had to redecorate a house of a chain smoker the evidence is there as old nicotine burns right through a first coat. I know lots of people who advertise books, records or equipment are quick to emphasise that they come from a smoke /pet free environment.
Does any authority on the subject have a scientific breakdown as to approximately what percentages of household airborne components normally contain? |
Googled "what is the composition of dust". Found this on the Martha Stewart page: "But there is one important myth to bust: While dead skin cells certainly do make up part of the dust in our homes, it's not as big of a portion as you may think. Sean Parry of Neat Services notes that people often assume that more than 50 percent of dust comes from dead skin, but in reality, "most of that is carried away by water when we bathe, ending up not on our floors, but in our sewers." ' I have no dog in the fight. I am a dusty nihilist. |
@lewm @dogberry According to this it's a "myth" that dust is mostly dead skin https://www.livescience.com/32337-is-house-dust-mostly-dead-skin.html Couldn't read the Canadian dust study w/o a subscription... FWIW |
I'm not qualified to speak on static, but dust I do know about, especially with respect to inhaling it and the allergies it can cause. When you wrote, @lewm ,
I'm afraid you are wrong. The predominant, component of household dust is human skin, though I expect it has been shed rather than shredded. |
I think the easy way out of this impasse and high blood pressure is….
Cover or lid, which ever way you want to play it….. ———————-
1. If the thoughts of dust filling your groove ruins your musical enjoyment, and have a lid…keep the lid down. 2. If you are worried that the sound will be compromised with the lid down or know it will be, as Arnie would say….’Don’t dooo iit! 3. If your hi-fi sounds great to your ears, you are happy with listening to music and you don’t notice a difference up or down….and have a lid, stick it down and save a lot of additional cleaning! 4. If you have a turntable without a lid, content or enjoy sometimes a little dusting fore play each time you want to listen….stick to a turntable without a lid! I think l have about covered it? That’s my Logic
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My-O-My ! I never expected to kick up so much "dust" with my re-telling of the story of when my audio dealer dusted his turntable dust cover and created enough magnetism to alter the stylus force ! Perhaps we can end it all simply by turning our attention to another interesting thing I noticed on my 1920's Victor "Credenza". On the lowest portion of the rather sizeable and heavy lid is a decal that states, "Close Lid Whilst Playing". Since it was effectively the turntable dust cover, I hope to stay within the confines of the original post. There definitely is a difference in the quality of sound when following the directions though I've never decided whether it was a diminution of the very noticeable stylus "scratch" or a real enhancement of the sound as a result of confining the sound box to a more restrictive acoustic. Victor even encouraged the regimen of closing the lid by providing the lid with two "dashpots" which damp the lid closure enough to prevent any slamming effect. On the Columbia "360" record player from the 1950's, the edges of the lid were lined with felt so that when the lid was closed it definitely created a different acoustic situation in which the cartridge had to function. The Speakers were located on the opposite sides of the unit and one driver was purposely wired "out of phase" to create a diffusive effect. Later models of the "360", though much more modern in the cabinet design, went even more deeply into the idea of encapsulating the cartridge in its own acoustic by integrating a fully sealed plastic container within the player to isolate the cartridge even more fully than the original model. You almost have to pry the lid to open it ! My question is : Were there any modern turntables that had a dust cover/lid that was designed purposely to be closed during the play cycle to take advantage [?] of the difference between an open or closed acoustic surrounding the cartridge ? Some of us have certainly experienced acoustic feedback when positioning a loudspeaker too close to a sensitive turntable that created an acoustic feedback through the cartridge, so the reasoning follows that attention to the acoustic in which a cartridge must function is important. I own both an early and late Columbia "360" machine and there are mono records that sound like fine stereo recordings on these machines ! Amazing !! The outer lids on both the Victrola and the Columbia "360' machines were of wood so they could not be magnetized. Thoughts ? Experiences ? |
I can't resist. Too much idle time. The equations of Newton and Coulomb are quite adequate for considering the situation at hand. You used their constants yourself as a basis for your statement about the relative magnitude of the two forces. No need for a unified theory here, which anyway does not exist. The reasons that your blanket statement about the relative strengths of gravity and electrostatic charge does not hold water are at least two-fold: (1) The units of the gravitational constant and Coulomb's constant are different. You cannot just assume that a numerical ratio between two different quantities is meaningful without considering the units (apples and oranges), and (2) in one case the objects are considered only for their mass (Newton) and in the other case the objects are considered only for their charge (Coulomb). I would say yes, in some cases the ES force can be greater than the gravitational force. In other cases, no, gravity dominates. It depends upon mass vs charge. One other difference between gravity and the ES force is that gravity is generally a force of attraction between two objects, whereas the ES force can be a force of repulsion, when the charges are alike in polarity, or attraction, when the charges are opposite in polarity. (Yes, I know about the question of whether the reason the universe is expanding means there is a repulsive form of gravity caused by dark matter, etc. But that is not an earthly problem.) |
Yes I read the Shure papers. You are right there is no data to back up their assertion. I don't know what happened to my Dust Bug either. Maybe it generated so much static charge that it self repelled into the dust bin? (Just kidding) Pity because it definitely appealed to me as a good idea back around 1969 or there abouts. Certainly an option for the dust cover-less. As I recall at that time I was struggling with an AR turntable. Horrible thing. Hated the arm. The dust cover for it got deep sixed very quickly. And Bob's your uncle, I bought a Dust Bug! Which worked a treat and stayed with me through a succession of turntables. I wouldn't be surprised if it is still in service on my old TD-125 somewhere. But let's think this through together. The footprint of a Dust Bug is considerably greater than the contact area of even the worst case conical stylus. If the Dust Bug did not generate significant static charge, and I posit that to be so, then it is reasonable to deduce that a stylus tracking the record grooves should certainly be even less. And without the means to measure the actual number, as reasonable people we can accept Shure's assessment that the amount of static generated by a stylus on a vinyl record, while somewhat above zero, it is negligible for all practical purposes. |
RB, to the question contained in your last paragraph, my current opinion, open to change if presented with contrary data (not a “belief”), is based on my data, the testimony of another Forum member who’s done the experiment many times before me with his own meter, and on the Shure Corporation white paper. You can buy a decent ES meter on eBay for less than $200. Why don’t you buy a meter, make some measurements, and then we can discuss. Don’t come to me with “Google AI” and no actual data or a reference to someone else’s actual data that is publicly available. The concept that the diamond on vinyl causes static charge is repeated over and over again in advertising for anti static devices, in audio forums like this one, etc. So it does not surprise me that Google AI believes it. I insulted you earlier,so I’ll forgive you for insulting me. If you want to go into detail about ES force vs gravity force, probably that would bore everyone else. But it’s not relevant. Wyoboy, sorry I over-reacted. |
@lewm I don't care if you keep posting on this subject or not--i've actually learned more from you about vinyl matters than most anyone else here except perhaps mijostyn. i was simply echoing your own words where you said "I don't know why I keep posting on this, because it is one of those questions where every one of us is already convinced of the efficacy and rightness of his or her current practice." And i didn't see anyone after that changing their mind despite your excellent advice. But didn't intend to make you stop so feel free to fire away. Happy New Year. |
And you claim to be a scientist! Physics has moved on a bit since Newton and Coulomb as it tries to produce a unified model of all the known forces and their interaction with all the known particles. If you turn 'proportional' into an equation with a constant, the constant for the electromagnetic force is about 10**36 times bigger than the constant for gravity. Thats why a very few stray electrons (not ions) easily overpower the gravity of the earth, and why they attract charged bits of dust floating in the air. Why don't you believe that a natural insulator like diamond rubbing on vinyl creates charges in the same way that paper and cat fur can? Especially when your own measurements quoted here support that! |
Have a look close to the end of this Wilson Benesch YouTube video on the GMT One System. The founder says they did design a dust cover, but when they added the transformer box above the tonearm pivot point, it no longer fitted! For what it is worth Most Technology and R&D Ever in a Turntable? Wilson Benesch Riveting Presentation - YouTube
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The ES force is determined by Coulomb’s law, which like Newton’s equation for the gravitational force is an inverse square law. Both forces are inversely related to the square of the distance between the two objects under consideration . The difference is that the ES force is directly proportional to the product of the two charge quantities, where gravity is directly proportional to the product of the two masses. So I couldn’t make sense of that flat statement. |
Richard, please get over yourself. I did believe what Shure wrote because of who they were, a company with high integrity and a scientific approach that they adhered to by backing up the majority of their information with decent experiments and by reporting the data therefrom. Did you read the paper? I actually bought the meter not only to do the experiment but mainly to measure the charge on my ESL diaphragm in the first place. So since I already had the meter, I used it for the purpose described, with results described. If you doubt me, buy or borrow a meter and do it yourself. But don’t infer I’m a liar or that Shure corporation are unethical. I also have to ask what would be my motive to deliberately post false information here? It makes no difference to me whether the stylus does or doesn’t cause static charge. I think what’s going on here is that you hate being corrected. Believe me; no one cares. Other reasons I bought the meter. (1) it seemed like a cool thing to have, and the other guy on this forum who did the same experiment many times with the same results told me where to get it. I have a weakness for gadgets, and 2) I’m a scientist and insatiably curious.
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So you did not really trust the Shure ’white paper’ you quoted to support your erroneous assertion! That’s quite an admission from somebody who claims to want the information on this site to be as accurate as possible. According to your posts, you had a residual voltage of 100-Volts after Zerostat and 200-Volts after playing, but you have not stated what meter you used or its repeatability. This is what the Shure seminar actually published on methods to reduce static. My highlighting and [comment]
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I have a Rega P6 with a dust cover. I have always used it with the cover up for no particular reason. Convenience maybe. Reading these posts I went up to do an experiment to see if I hear a difference. I was gonna try cover up, cover down and cover off the plinth with my best quality records. I dropped the needle and NO LEFT CHANNEL! Turns out the amp picked that day to crap out. It's under warranty so I'm sending it off to Focal Naim for repair. I'm still gonna do the experiment but it's going to be awhile. I doubt my set up is detailed enough to hear a difference. |
I did take the trouble to find and read thoroughly the Shure seminar articles. Have you read them? There is absolutely nothing about styli causing static except that throwaway line that it is negligible. No experiment, no discussion, no measurement, nothing. Generative AI uses large language models to make inferences. Most likely Google's includes everything you have written on the web, and weighs it against what everybody else has written. I find it both credible and fascinating. My dust bug has gone missing, but the base is still stuck to my Garrard 301. I recall it quite audibly played what was coming up on the record, but have no idea why they fell out of favour. |
Can't trust reviews or media - the GMT has a very nice integrated hinged dust cover. Ideal for those who can't afford hepafiltration systems for their home/living room.
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Dear RB, Googles AI is full of.... baloney as regards bullet number one, and the whole business of AI is scary, because we tend to believe ""AI" and AI is nothing but a computer that scanned a bunch of opinions put into print by humans, and humans are still faulty. Shure did the actual experiment. I repeated it and so too did another person who regularly posts here. He and I got actual results that agree with the Shure publication.But like I said, do whatever you want. "The human body is normally a great drain for static." Where do you get that? Static charge is nothing more than an imbalance of positive vs negative ions sitting on the surface of an object. In other words, it's a phenomenon of surfaces. So it is probable that if your body is charged up, because for example you are wearing leather soled shoes and you walked across a wool carpet before touching your LP, you might charge up your LP the instant you touch it. (Let's say your surface becomes negatively charged and touching the LP pulls positive ions off the vinyl surface to neutralize your own body surface, leaving negative charge on the vinyl. Vinyl is near the bottom of the triboelectric table [see for example the article on the triboelectric series on Wiki] and dry skin is at the top. This means skin "wants" to give off charge to vinyl. There is much that is unknown about the electrostatic charge phenomenon, and the triboelectric series and table are only crutches.) Your "TAS-recommended" AudioQuest carbon fiber brush is nice but far far from a perfect guarantee of a charge-free LP; I own one and use it before every play while grounding myself. It does not work all that well to prevent static charge build up, which in the case of vinyl is an excess of negative ions on the surface of the LP. Of course, pulling an LP out of its paper sleeve is another important cause of the static charge on LPs, as I mentioned 3-4 posts ago; it's what I did to create a positive control for my experiment to see whether the zerostat worked and whether the stylus tracing the LP is a cause of static charge, trying to repeat the Shure experiment. The speakers in my basement are Beveridge 2SWs. You can categorize them as "electrostatic" but in fact they are a unique design in that there is no charge on the membranes in the resting state. There is no external high voltage bias supply as for every other ESL. So, no dice. On the other hand, the Sound Lab 845PXs in my living room are conventional ESLs, and yes there you have to be wary of their collecting dust on the diaphragm. "Shredded skin" does not strike me as an important cause, if it is any cause at all, of dust, unless you keep 30-40 people in your listening room. Maybe you were trying to be funny. |
Since when are we taking anything Google's generative AI has to offer as an authority? Frankly lewm's reference to the published work of Shure years ago is an established, credible resource and those who disparage it must be doing so only because they have not taken the time to read it. Shure's published work has always been of the highest order and commands the respect of the entire industry. This is not a fly by night outfit only out for the fast buck. Google on the other hand...give me a break. After we get done talking dust covers to death, if anybody is left standing let's talk about the good old Dust Bug! :-) |
The human body is normally a great drain for static. Rubbing paper against a record creates static, handling it is more likely to drain some away especially if you only touch the edges and the label. My TAS-recommended AudioQuest carbon fibre brush explicitly relies on the user to drain the static to earth, via a metal handle that contacts the fibres. The human body is also a great source of dust, shedding its outer skin roughly every three weeks. Maybe your electrostatic loudspeakers are acting as electrostatic dust filters for your basement?
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This is what Google’s generative AI says in response to "can record stylus cause static"!
I agree with all of this, except that getting a final zero-charge out of a Zerostat is hard - as pointed out by Shure. Also no great surprise that Shure, as the then dominant maker of stylii, did not highlight that they cause static. |
