Vinyl Care

Thanks, Neil. Looks like it's been changed since then and the cans no longer mention the QA compounds. I'll save my old cans in case I ever fancy taking up solvent sniffing.

@billstevenson 

Do not worry about things that cannot occur such as diamond tracing vinyl producing electrostatic energy

What a very strange approach you have to science, and the scientific method!

Perhaps you would care, in your spirit of keeping this thread on the straight and narrow, to explain what you mean by this statement, and how you know it cannot occur?

By the way, I do not think anyone has claimed that "diamond tracing vinyl" produces electrostatic energy.  Apart from anything else, as far as we know in our universe, energy (as defined by physics) is always conserved.

Friction between two insulators does cause some electrons to be displaced from the insulator with the lower electron affinity to the one with the higher affinity.  Polyvinyl chloride has one of the highest known electron affinities.  Once again, I trust Wikipedia: Triboelectric effect - Wikipedia.  I quote

It is ubiquitous, and occurs with differing amounts of charge transfer (tribocharge) for all solid materials

Next I would invite you to consider what the consequences of such charges, adhering to the vinyl groove wall, might be? 

I have been ridiculed in this forum for pointing out that electromagnetic forces exceed gravitational forces by about 36 orders of magnitude, according to the Standard Model of particle physics: see Standard Model - Wikipedia

Strength at the scale of protons/neutrons (relative to electromagnetism)

10−36 (predicted)

I hypothesise that these stray electrons will attract any positively charged dust mites and clamp them to the groove wall with tremendous force, where they will cause clicks and pops when traced by the diamond stylus.  Neil’s book shows electron microscope images which would tend to support this hypothesis.

Interestingly, we all (hopefully) know that diamond stylii wear on their contact facets during play.  The bits of diamond that are abraded away are likely to be positively charged (in our universe charge is conserved and the diamond has donated electrons to the vinyl) and will add to the material locked in place in the groove.  And diamond is the best abrasive known to man.

Neil’s book reports an astonishing proportion of diamond dust in the detritus picked up by stylii:

An analysis of the “dust” removed from a number of stylus tips, which had been used on dirty records, showed that it consisted of approximately: 12% jagged silica particles, 35% diamond dust, 40% miscellaneous particles, including soot, grit and particles worn from the record groove itself.  The remaining 13% consisted of fibers and lint. 

My belief is a hypothesis, but seems to be supported by empirical evidence.  If I were smart enough, I should make some predictions that others could test but experimental physics at small scales is both difficult and expensive!

@richardbrand,

The quote from book is from THE WEAR AND CARE OF RECORDS AND STYLI, by Harold D. Weiler, 1954.  

The diamond dust is of no consequence - it is very fine sub-micron that really has no impact to record playback.  As I say in the book (Chapter VI).  This has to exist as a very, very fine powder and the finest diamond powder you can buy is 100,000 grit which is 0.25 micron. So, the diamond wear powder on the record is probably less which in the end becomes inconsequential so long as there is no cleaner residue.
If whatever wear byproduct powder that is produced by the diamond and the record is kept dry and free of oily and sticky residue, the stylus should move through this without any effect – not unlike a light coating of very dry powder-snow, it just blows around.

Now the jagged silica particles are something else, and its origins are likely natural aerosols that the book addresses in Chapter IV and can be very fine Sahara Desert sand - you can read further about aerosols at NASA.  

Fundamentally, the electrical resistance of PVC is report as about 10^16 Electrical Resistivity of Polymers and Plastics - Table while diamond is reported as 10^16 to 10^18 Resistivity of Carbon, Diamond - The Physics Factbook.  This similarity would tend to minimize any triboelectric effect and support the reports that the diamond does not cause static on the record.  Otherwise, if you carefully read Chapter VI, Table IV, you will see where the triboelectric series is better quantified.  Standard HDPE record sleeves are close to PVC which is why they are used, but they are far enough apart that if you quickly pull the record from the sleeve, there is some risk of developing a static charge on the record.      

RB evidently persists in his conviction that the friction between stylus and groove is a cause (certainly even he would not say it is the only cause) of static electric charge on the vinyl surface. This despite the fact that months ago when this question came up, already for the Nth time, it was made known to RB that Shure Corporation studied this phenomenon in the context of their white paper on the subject of static charge, which is available on line, and Shure investigators failed to find evidence to support the thesis.  RB was dissatisfied with the Shure report, because they failed to provide much in the way of experimental detail.  Fair enough, but why would they make it up? Anyway, I and at least one other Forum member have done the experiment in a controlled fashion, using a static electric charge meter to measure charge on the vinyl surface before and after play.  We both, independently, find no evidence to support the "stylus/vinyl friction theory" for the genesis of static charge.  However, the idea is evidently so appealing to RB that he wants to bring it up again.

On how charge can be removed from the LP surface, the "ozone theory" (the notion that an ozone cloud over the LP neutralize static charge) is ridiculous, although it is true that some of the gear sold to remove or prevent static charge build up does in passing produce low amounts of ozone. If your gadget has an element that needs periodic replacement or cleaning, it is probably one of those that does produce ozone.  To the best of my ability to find out, other types of ion generators do not produce ozone.  The deal is that vinyl accumulates negative ions on its surface; that is the nature of the static charge. Flooding the surface with positive ions will neutralize the charge.  Static electricity is a fascinating subject, and much about it is still not well understood.

richardbrand,

Ben Franklin advises us to say all of the positive things we can, but none of the negative.  You seem determined to obfuscate the value of this discussion with unproveable conjecture.  The following is my response....

Please stop.