What devices have you found useful when inspecting your stylii for cleanliness?

@elliottbnewcombjr 

I think your magnifying mirror will work well for me!  I have tried a loupe, but not as good a one as @mulveling recommends.  I will get both!

I have a USB digital microscope, but it is a pain to set up.  I might also try a car inspection camera which at least includes a light source and is self-contained.  I don't think it would help for cleaning, though.

Really need something I can use after each side is played, and which can stay in place

@lewm I am getting pretty quick at removing the entire tone arm from the mounting board.  Much faster for me than removing and refitting a cartridge!

@lewm

Thanks, I can see where you are coming from, even if I cannot see my own stylus! Just as an aside, what do you consider the back of the stylus to be, the bit that faces the oncoming groove or the bit that is essier to see?

My tone arm dates from about 1972, and is an SME 3009 Series II improved with fixed head shell.  SME sold almost half a million similar arms but I have no idea how many had fixed head shells.  Secondhand it is worth less than 1/10 of your Tri-Planar!

SME gets most of the credit for the industry standard head shell socket, which was actually by Ortofon.  The advantages of a fixed head shell include less mass, more rigidity and fewer electrical connections.  The disadvantage is, er, it is fixed.

My current cartridges are both Moving Magnet types, so the stylii can be pulled out of the cartridge body, though I have not been game enough to try this yet.

I takes just a few minutes to unscrew the four screws holding the arm to the base and unplug its DIN connector, so I can look at the whole assembly upside down.  Or just undoing two bolts achieves the same thing but does not guarantee to keep the previous alignment.

Happy to do this every few months to look for wear, but I really want something that helps each day, and ideally has near zero set-up time

@rauliruegas 

First, thanks for the upgrade to "gentleman"!   For context, most of the music I play is classical.

I am just seeing if I want to get back into vinyl, after years of being told it is better than digital, and finding out that my old Garrard 301 is still highly regarded in some quarters.

After various upgrades, including a nude micro-line stylus, I am getting CD-like sound quality from some of my records, most of which have not been played much over the last 40 years.  The sound quality is incredibly sensitive to tracking force and to dirt on the stylus.  I want to ensure that any changes I hear and measure after each tweak are because of the tweak and not because of other factors like dirt.

At least I can be sure that my older records were actually analogue!  I now know that almost all records produced over the last couple of decades go through a digital mastering stage.

@lewm 

"If your SQ is only CD-like, you have a way to go. Hi Rez streaming is a legit alternative to vinyl, but, IMO, high quality vinyl has it all over RBCD"

Yes, I agree I have a way to go!  So far, I have taken a quality 70 year old turntable and a 50 year old tone arm and had a first cut at getting them to play well.  I have not even got to fine-tuning the system. 

Unfortunately, at this point I have very few albums (hate that word) on both silver disk and vinyl that I can directly compare.  My comment on CD-like quality is based mainly on a new Decca (London) recording of Beethoven's triple concerto, where I only have the vinyl version.  If I ignore the faint surface noise and some idler-wheel rumble, I could believe a well-recorded CD was playing!  These days I mainly play high resolution classical SACDs which are in another league in my opinion.  I have another vinyl on order for direct comparison against SACD!

(I think classical music has been served better on CD than most other genres - what do you listen to?)

@rauliruegas I have been pulling my table and arm apart several times a day while I fashion and fit plinth inserts made from 28-mm thick MDF with constrained damping layers in between. On one occasion the small sliding weight got shifted accidentally and the cartridge was tracking close to the old Shure’s recommended 1.2 grams rather than the 2.1 grams it should be. Audibly there was something horribly wrong! Similar thing if too much fluff gets caught by the stylus. There are more nasties if the very fine nylon line holding the anti-skating weight comes off its pulley, or gets itself wrapped around the wire holding the pulley.

As far as I can tell, the tone arm itself is in very good condition, except for some minor corrosion on the electrical connectors to the cartridge. By design, the sliding balance weight is only good for 0 to 1.5 grams so I twist the main weight using a digital scale to get into the ballpark before final adjustment with the sliding weight. There has been a lot of trial, and a lot of error! The classic error was using a small cable tie to fasten the motor cable to the transit mounting, which is spring loaded and well clear of the motor when the whole thing is upside down. Once the right way up, and hidden inside the plinth, the motor descended and got fouled by the cable tie!

The record that I mainly test with is an Accoustic Research demonstration disk, and I use a jazz track with trumpet, piano, bass and drums. An alternative is an Original Master Recording of Sir Adrian Boult conducting Elgar’s orchestral transcription of a Bach organ piece. Plenty of braying brass there! I have a couple of test disks - the "Ultimate Analogue Test LP" and a German equivalent. More vinyl is on its way including Hyperion’s Shostakovich Piano Concertos, which I already use as tests on SACD.

I really am having fun, and learning lots ...

@billstevenson Thanks for the great tips.  One mystery remains: "After each side is played the stylus is inspected".  What, if anything, do you use to do this?

Thanks everybody and especially @elliottbnewcombjr for the very informative pictures.  I am going to go for something like that small LED-lit magnifying mirror and a BelOMO loupe.

Only problem is that I live Down Under.  The Australian website selling BelOMO has stopped carrying them, offered me a Russian one instead.  They think that Amazon may be able to oblige.  The US store's website has them as "out of stock' but apparently some have just come in.  Next issue - they only have facilities to ship to the US.  But in a few weeks' time that should change!  Down here, we just pop things in the mail.

As a trading nation, Australia does not have tariffs, and the local 10% goods and services tax is not normally charged on small imported items so we positively encourage imports.  In exchange for our copious supplies of iron ore, coal and gas, I'm afraid.

Have not been able to find a suitable mirror yet, either!  But as they say, I am looking into it

@goofyfoot Spelling forgiven! I am sure it was your spell-checker :-)

I have been getting offers from B&H every week! Took me a while to realise they were once Bell and Howell of movie equipment fame.

It also took me a while to realise that most loupes are used for jewelry or inspecting creepy-crawlies. Australia is not short of jem-stones, or nasty biters. It seemed silly to order from New York so I searched locally.

Because I could not source BelOMO loupes, I have gone upmarket and ordered a Zeiss Optics D4 10X loupe. I could get one in town (Sydney) for a tad over A$340, which is about what my stylus is worth, but I found one on-line for well under half that from China, including our 10% gst. Hope it is the real thing!

This is a nostalgia trip for me, as I am restoring my Dad’s Garrard 301. He lent me the first camera I ever used, which was a Leica film camera with a fixed 50-mm Zeiss lens. He took award winning black and white photos on it, but I could never remember to set all the eight manual controls needed for proper photography. Nothing digital about it, or even electrical. Bit like vinyl, really.

@goofyfoot 

There's a Leica shop in Sydney full of very exxe film cameras.  A mate of mine was trained as a police forensic photographer and he was often asked what is the best camera?  "Mate, it is the one you have in your hand when you want to take a photo"!

These days it is usually my phone ...which I suppose is like ear buds versus HiFi

@goofyfoot My Zeiss D40 loupe arrived from China.  I thought the package was empty, because the loupe is so small and light!  Might have to buy a bigger loupe in case I mislay the Zeis and need to find it!

It would have to be the highest dollars-per-gram lens purchase I have ever made, but it is seriously good, especially when used as directed in a 30-mm gap between the eye and the object.  Works almost as well when it is close to the object and the eye is almost at infinity.

I see you also have big Quad electrostatics!