When do records damage a stylus

Both Timo and Bomarc are right. Friction "grinds" both the stylus and the record. As a general rule though, diamonds are harder than vinyl, so most of the damage will be on the vinyl end of things. Ticks and pops are bad for your amp and speakers whereas "groove grunge" is bad for your groove walls first and then your stylus. As such, cleaner records will reduce the chance for damage to your amp, speakers, records and stylus. I'd worry more about cleaning the records and stylus properly more-so than damaging either of them. If the records are bad enough that you are experiencing high levels of transient energy bursts ( HUGE ticks and pops ), you might want to think about replacing the record or not playing it. Then again, there are a few threads in the archive about how to remove or at least reduce the effects of ticks, pops and scratches. It might be worth some occasional surface noise to enjoy irreplaceable tunes. Sean
>

Z: A hard "tick" or "pop" is of immense intensity and speed compared to anything recorded onto a disc. If one is playing very "intense" rock music ( which is highly compressed and has a very high average level ) at high spl's, it's quite possible that the added energy from such an intense burst ( far greater dynamic range, faster rise times and no compression applied ) could drive the amp into clipping and pop the tweeters. The same could be said of a classical disc that has a tick / pop that occurs during a crescendo. The amp is already up and running and hitting it with a bigger peak of greater intensity could be just enough.

As a side note, large bursts like a tick or pop can overload a phono stage that has a limited amount of headroom. The distortion from the phono stage being overdriven is then amplified by the line stage and passed onto the amplifier where it dumps into the speaker. Feeding distortion into a speaker is never a good thing. As you can see, the potential for very fast, high amplitude signals and a greater amount of distortions becomes more apparent as one digs deeper into the subject.

I ran into such situations before with some B&W's and Klipsch being driven by very fast electronics. I know others that ran into such a situation with other combo's of equipment. If you do a search on the various forums, you'll find mentions of B&W's having a propensity towards tweeter failure for one reason or another. I'm sure that they are not alone in this category, so i felt a word of general caution was called for.

The saving grace for many in this situation is that their electronics are too slow to respond to such a fast & intense burst ( limited slew rate and rise time ). As such, the signal never reaches full intensity or duration and the tweeters are spared. Faster electronics are more likely to respond to the full amplitude and duration of such a signal, potentially posing more of a risk to the speakers. No, this is not an endorsement or recommendation to buy or use "slow" electronics : )

The obvious solution is to clean your records as best possible. Not only will all of the components and records last longer, the music will sound better too : ) Sean
>

Z: Most tube circuits move about as fast as turtles on their backs. Then again, some SS designs i've run across are even slower than that. I've got two SS amps that slew at 5v/uS. Then again, my Dad's old tube preamp used to have a 13 uS rise time. Can you say "sloooooow" but do it VERY slowly : ) Sean
>