Be very careful about putting pure alcohol directly onto your stylus. Alcohol may dissolve the glue that holds the stylus to the cantilever, and soon you will be playing LPs with a cantilever and no stylus. Styllast ,the company, makes products specifically designed to clean styli. You could buy a bottle of stylast very cheaply. Also there are other products like magic eraser and ultrasonic cleaners That do a good job cleaning a stylus. But alcohol is a nono.
Toshiba almost certainly needs maintenance if it’s from the 70s or 80s. Your own report should tell you that at the very least the switches are dirty and probably also the volume controls. That is why you are occasionally losing the output from one channel or the other. That alone could cause the sound to be veiled. But having said all that I agree with others that there are any number of modern inexpensive outboard phono stages that would probably be superior to the Toshiba, even if the Toshiba is working 100%.
Toshiba almost certainly needs maintenance if it’s from the 70s or 80s. Your own report should tell you that at the very least the switches are dirty and probably also the volume controls. That is why you are occasionally losing the output from one channel or the other. That alone could cause the sound to be veiled. But having said all that I agree with others that there are any number of modern inexpensive outboard phono stages that would probably be superior to the Toshiba, even if the Toshiba is working 100%.