Cartridge Question
- Thread starter sbnx
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here is one data point. maybe Ortofon knows a thing or five about cartridges.
https://www.ortofon.com/support/support-hifi/faq-installation/
wide degree of variance for wear of a stylus or suspension. and how does one define 'degradation of performance'? i suppose it would require a good before and after microscope picture.
of course, keeping track of hours is another question too.
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"With proper care we find that up to 1000 hours is possible without degradation of performance. "
This data point will make most people very nervous ...
Degradation of performance is easily checked with a test LP and a soundcard with accessible software.
Wow. 1000 hours is way shorter than I would have thought. One album a day and you get 3 years. But how much degradation? Would this be to a point where it is just barely audible or to the point where measurements start to drop out of spec? And how fast does it fall off from there (linear or exponential?)
my experience is only if your suspension gets soft or loose does the sound fall off quickly. i had an early MC Anna that had glue failure in the suspension (there was a factory fix); that was dramatic with less than 100 hours.
with stylus wear the sound goes from perfect to a long gradual decline.
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Google inside the Shure site service.shure.com . You will find many articles and documents on stylus wear, how to check it and causes of stylus wear. Shure refers to a typical lifetime between 800 and 1000 hours for their best stylus.
most likely fall off of performance from age is when stylus wear is combined with suspension sag and in total pasts a certain point.
Dear friend exist several factors to take in count and as a fact there are no precise time to know how long this or that cartridge stylus will last
J.Allaerts spec on his top cartridge models gives 10K hours on it. I owned the MC2 Finish Gold thta was my sample that took M.Fremer to made his review:
https://www.stereophile.com/phonocartridges/507allaerts/index.html#:~:text=The MC2 Finish Gold is,, too, are solid gold.
I now have the Formula One.
Several years ago Ortofon made a deep research with his Golden Ear group and its cartridge own specialist where they found out that it needs to pass 500 hours to a good stylus starts to have tiny degradation that we mere " mortals " can't detect.
Now, I said good stylus and this means first rate stylus tip because not all stylus ( in does not matters its shape. ) are made with the same quality levels. The quality level of the Anna Diamond model is not exactly the same as the one in the Windfeld even than in both are the replicant 100.
I think that a good cared cartridge if we own a high resolution room/system after 1K hours could be we can to listen/detect some kind of degradation but not always because the stylus degradation goes slowly and our brain goes accustom to that very slow degradation.
Normally some kind of mistracking at the inner grooves or with high frequency demanding grooves tells us something is wrong down there and maybe time to re-tip.
Now, a 1K hours of first rate cartridge performance is a lot of time and normally after those 3 years you are talking about maybe you already have a new and probably better cartridge, so don't worry about just take care of it and you will have more than that 1K hours to enjoy your cartridge.
Of course thate xist some kind of failures in some top cartridges as what happened with the ML Anna cartridge and I remember a gentleman in Agon with a Lyra Atlas where he started a thread because he was listening some kind of " noise " through his Atlas cartridge. I participated in that thread along other true audiophiles and other that here are named industry expert ( yes that post here. ) every one posted their advices for the OP will makes some tests but nothing really changed but only the problem goes a little less present. His cartridge had 1.5K hours and he says that the M.Fremer one ( same model ) had 2K and other Atlas owners there gave their opinions too and more than one with over those 1.5K hours on the Atlas.
After all those posts I told the OP that his Atlas had broken/fissure the cantilever ( not any troble with the suspension. ) and he sended to Lyra to fix it and at the end that was the problem: broken/fissure at the cantilever.
Been hosten by an Agoner at his place in Houston and just when we were listening his really top room/system he had mounted in his Rockport TT a Lyra Titan ( that was the top of the line in that time. ) and we can´t listen nothing because when the Titan touched the LP surface instead to track/ride in normal way goes very fast.
The problem was that the stylus tip of the Titan just disappeared: no stylus tip and the owner had no explanation about, the Titan with less than 400 hours. Fortunatelly for us he had a Clearaudio cartridge that I help to him to set up and that's all.
Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.
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