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Testing stylus wear.

I have an Ortofon 2M Blue stylus that I’ve had for 3.5 years. They advise up to 1000 hours of useful life but that’s just a rough estimate. I have not kept track of my hours of play. I’ll go for 3 weeks with lots of use and then a few more weeks of very little analog use and mostly digital use with my DAC. I just bought a lot of mint vinyl LP’s and got scared that my stylus may be worn, even though it sounds fine to me.

So, I have a new stylus and usb microscope on order. I just found an interesting article (http://www.pspatialaudio.com/stylus_wear.htm) that suggests something other than a visual inspection, since the tip is the only part of the stylus that gets worn and it’s apparently too small to judge even with a microscope.

The new method is to make two identical digital recordings--one with the older stylus and a second one with a new stylus. Then you A-B the two recordings. Since I already have a new 2M Blue coming tomorrow and another one on my turntable with unknown wear, I think I’ll give this method a try.

Has anyone heard of this? Any better ways to test if i should junk the old 2M Blue or somehow test it?

rff000
tsacremento
65 posts
 

It's easy to see the stylus wear planes develop and grow with a decent microscope. However, having the 'scope's illumination set correctly is critical. When that requirement is met, the wear planes light up like oval headlamps.

rff000 OP
23 posts
 

Update:

I got my new 2M Blue stylus from Fluance, even though I don't own their TT because most other outlets had the stylus on back order. They also gave me a $10 coupon which covered most of the tax (funny that a Canadian company has to collect tax for a state in the U.S.). I was surprised to receive not only the stylus I ordered, but a new cartridge too. I called them and asked what happened and it turned out it was a mistake. They said I could keep the cartridge (which I don't need anyway).

I also got the Jiusion microscope, thinking that I'd check the old stylus. It turned out to be a huge pain to focus on the stylus and enlarge it to a reasonable size, so I returned it to Amazon, where I bought it.

It might just be impressionistic, but the new stylus seems to be a slight bit more detailed than the old one. The best thing is that now I can stop wondering whether I have to change it for a long time.

grk
207 posts
 

You may want to get a stylus timer to keep track of your hours. All you have to do is remember to turn it on and then off when you are finished playing records. I bought mine from Music Direct.

 
1 ASTMSTYTIMER
aspens
21 posts
 

Another resource:

 

mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,226 posts
 

I'm afraid your USB microscope will not do the trick. You need high magnification with a large depth of field and special lighting to see the wear. This is an expensive device, over $1000. The best way to do this is to take a picture of the stylus when new then a new one every year until you spot wear then replace it. The "cats eyes" refers to wear on spherical and elliptical styluses. With modern stylus profiles you will see squinting cat's eyes, more slit like. This is looking straight down on stylus. Traditionally I used a medical microscope with special lighting. The problem is a very low depth of field so you have to look at each view like you would a CT scan, one slice at a time. 

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