Stylus Cleaning Rituals

Remember when Linn said to use sandpaper??

As King Arthur would say, "What do you mean? Wet or dry sandpaper?"  

https://youtu.be/VvSO5KEnaVE?t=177

@millercarbon, might you be willing to describe your Zerostat routine? Every source seems to say something different.

The Zerostat is nothing more than a piezoelectric crystal that generates an ion stream off of the pointy needle inside the end of the gun. Squeeze and ions stream, release and cations stream. The trick is to squeeze and release slow and gradual. If it clicks going either way you are going too fast. 

It is not a huge amount either way, and it is not very effective, nor does it last very long. To me it mostly is a ritual. Although occasionally some speck of dust is on there, the Zerostat will be enough to let you blow it off.

Anyway, I put the record on, clamp it down, start it spinning and then squeeze from outside to inside, release from inside to outside, done. Whole thing is maybe 5 seconds.  

Another one of these things people can obsess over, worrying about how it is used, when really it is dealing with static electricity. Something that changes from day to day and record to record and probably a lot of the time whatever benefit you got is erased by new charges being generated while the record is playing. Not something I would spend any time worrying about. Not even something I would buy, if I didn't already have one.

I'm using the same bottle of Stylast and the same Discwasher type stylus brush since the 1970's. Same Zerostat too. Most of my records are cleaned with Walker Enzyme 4Step. Every play they get Zerostat, and then after every side the stylus gets a quick swipe or two with the Stylast. Every few times I mix it up and use the brush instead. 

Some records I'm not so fussy, but generally give the stylus a swipe or two after every side.