Cartridge break-in: with or without tears?

Thanks to you all. I am feeling much reassured and won't ever make that particular mistake again.

TWL: The test record was toast from the moment I opened it and saw the label torn and spattered, waiting to snag any stylus that ventured too near. To my mind it thoroughly deserved its pulverization. So I can think of this as merely a detour on the way to the trashbin.

Dougdeacon: I'm not quite so far gone as actually to have spent those hours listening to the pink noise. (Though just a smidgen more infatuation and such a thing might begin to seem a rational and attractive use of time.) My patchy system no longer has actual speakers, only headphones (AKG-K1000s, far cheaper than comparably good speakers and more practical in my acoustically leaky apartment). I just stuck the earphones on my ears every once in a while to make sure nothing was going audibly wrong.

Cpdunn99: Possibly so. Not everything sounds gives that treble tizziness, however; and some records (like a set of Couperin trios on ASV Gaudeamus last night) are perfection. The P3 isn't especially friendly to VTA adjustments, but I've got a couple of spacers around and will experiment. Maybe my ideas of perfection need a little exercise.

Kurt_tank: The Glider was what my local audio dealer steered me to, I think because he had had experience with it and not with the other cartridges I had come in to ask him about. I felt a little hesitant about it, but this cartridge was necessarily going to be a compromise between something that would work with the P3 and its RB300 and might also be transferrable (I hope) to what I might get next--except that the more I read the less sure I am of what I ought to or even can get next, so the framework of this hypothetically reasonable compromise has fallen apart. Anyway, it's experience.

Given the state of the rest of my system, I really have no business owning a Loricraft at all. I love it but can't do a proper comparison with other machines, first because it's the only RCM I've used (I took a big jump up from an ancient DiscWasher and then a carbon fiber brush, both of which did a surprisingly good job of keeping my records pretty clean, considering) and second because the unit I got was used when I bought it. I've had some problems with the management of the thread--since more or less resolved, partly by the SmartDevices technicians, who gave the thread tube a good flossing and replaced the jar's hardware, and partly by my own experimentation with the speed of the vacuum head's movement over the surface of the record. But these problems I think I would not have experienced had I shelled out for a new machine. I got the Loricraft instead of a VPI for the same principal reason I use headphones rather than real speakers: a strong desire not to drive my neighbors crazy. But I'm not especially fond of the VPI's shrieking myself. And, maybe more than anything else, I just loved the splendid solidity and admirable ingenuity and general wellmadeness of the Loricraft--a primitive feeling of intense liking that that has me in its grip even yet.

Susan

I suppose my need to shorten the break-in period must be some pathological variant on upgrade-itis: I can't afford the amp I'd like to have, or the turntable, but I *can* drive my cartridge through a wild and hasty youth. So, much chastened and carefully considering everyone's advice, I will be moderately immoderate and will try alternating briefish periods on the lateral and vertical modulation grooves, if the splattered label lets me, and then I will stop and listen to records and not criticize any more. By the way, has anyone had any experience using the break-in tracks on the Clearaudio stroboscopic record? Are all break-in tracks more or less the same?

With the Loricraft I was just lucky. The way I got it was by calling Smart Devices, the US importers, and asking if they had any refurbished ones to sell. I ended up with one (not refurbished) that had just been traded in for one of the even sturdier models. Most of the people at Smart Devices were not at all eager to do this, as I realized afterwards; but I was fortunate in the first person I happened to talk to about it, Lavinia Radulea, who found out a way to arrange it. With absurd generosity, they gave me the full warrantee. Buying it used saved me five hundred dollars. I don't think I would have been able to talk myself into doing it otherwise. As it was, I had to tell myself lies (about how I was going to keep the Loricraft just long enough to clean my collection once and then immediately sell it again) in order to get past the guilt at spending even as much money as I did.

Dougdeacon, yes, I do remember your suggestion a few weeks ago about leaving the air pump on all the time. I tried it when my machine was misbehaving so badly that no amount of ingenuity could save it; now that it is behaving somewhat better what you advise does help. But I think the problem with my machine (now not much of a problem at all) has to do either with the acceleration of the arm at the beginning of its movement from the label outwards. The faster it moves (and the speed is variable, unpredictable), the more likely there is to be a thread problem. Slowing it down and giving it a bit more fresh thread seems to work best.

Patrickamory, I believe you are right about the component and synergy deficiencies. I know what I'd like my system to be, but the interval (replacing one piece at a time) is likely to be long and awkward. Indeed, I am not sure what to do next.

The shocking thing is that this whole lunatic analog binge began as an economical way (I thought) to keep my ears happy while I decided whether I could scrape up the money for a used Wadia. In that distant, innocent time, the idea that I might have to spend four hundred dollars on a VPI RCM just clean staggered me.

Susan

Who has the money for a (used, bottom of the line) Wadia after all this? No, my disappointment is going to have to find itself a humbler cause than that.

Susan