Vinyl Asylum

Posted by Thomas_A (A) on July 12, 2004 at 06:53:33

In Reply to: Excellent questions....I'd also like to hear answers from others about these questions.... posted by John Elison on July 11, 2004 at 15:32:01:

John,

did you look at the tip with a microscope? I think that it's difficult to eyeball the azimuth of the stylus tip with a mirror, which should be within ±1°.

I looked at my Shure tip with an 30 x handheld scope. What I could se was that the diamond actually was not symmetric (slightly curved) and there will be an imperfect azimuth with my example. I could see two lighter "spots" on one side with a certain angle of light where I expect the ridges, perhaps related to wear. I have no idea of whether these tiny ridges are rapidly worn down because of their small size.

I will look at the shape at my work some time, with some higher powered microscopes. The tip is very tiny though compared to the Clearaudio Alpha tip. I understand why the Shure tracks better.

I can share some crosstalk values here later @400,1000 and 10000 Hz. I do not expect "magic" values, since the azimuth is slightly off.

T