What do you think causes the crackle and clicks we hear?

MC, I have two 911s and neither one squeals. One is ceramic and it is supposed o have a reputation for that. The other one will grind just starting out if the brakes got wet but no squeal. It has Girodisc rotors on it and Centric pads.

Johnss, My records are never touched by any cleaning device or fluid. Just a conductive sweep arm and the stylus. Excuse me. Some of my very old albums were treated with Last. I stopped when I figured out that it was not doing a darn thing. Maybe to rare fingerprint when I slip.
 I just got a new WiFi USB microscope. I will see if I can get pictures and figure a way to post them. 
Used records and records that have gotten dirty are a different problem. I can understand why those who buy used records get a record cleaning devise. I do not. The secret to clean records is, don't let them get dirty in the first place. 

@ mijostyn, no worries. I used to think exactly the same; keep records from getting dirty in first place; be super anal about not letting anyone else handle them, etc. That was key to clean records.

But now realize that is not the case. The particles in the bottom of the groove are from the cooling cycle of the pressing process or operation during LP manufacturing, so are completely independent and totally unrelated to how clean or how well you handle or dont handle your records, brand new or old. 
I will say the 180 gram and 200 gram LPs I have looked at do have a lower level of particles in the groove than the 1970s and 80s LPs, so there is more care taken with these than the earlier commonly released titles pressed by whom ever. But these particles are still there. 

I have a large (but not huge)  collection, with many LPs from the 1650s-70s, plus many re-issues from Speakers Corner and Acoustic Sounds. For years I always thought the VPI or NG were made for removing finger prints, dust, lint, etc.

Once I realized that was not the case, then the door got blown off on my original theories on LP cleaning that have been drummed into my head by so many over the years. So then had to experiment to see what worked to remove  the white particles. Many trials of cleaning, then looking under the scope to see if I mad a difference or not.

If anyone knows how to  post photos to this blog would be happy to do it, but in the past have tried that with no success.

if you use a stylus cleaning solution, take a look in the solution. It should be loaded with white particles all floating around in bottle.

And once you get the grooves free of 90% of the particles, you will be amazed at how much lower the noise floor becomes, and how much more ambience is pulled from those grooves.

These clicks, etc. are caused by a good stylus that tracks the imperfections, or a bad one that does not .

This statement is false.


I’m very used to not hearing any ticks or pops over an entire LP side, even on LPs that were pressed in the early 1960s that I bought used.

The cartridge makes no difference- this is consistent whether a Grado, Mico Benz, Lyra, Koetsu and so on.

When an album is mastered, its common to send a test of the stampers to the producer, who has to sign off on it. One thing he listens for is ticks and pops- it won’t do to have them pressed into the LP surface else there will be returns. This has been the process for decades, so production LPs should be pretty quiet. And if your phono section is well-behaved, they are.

I had a Coda Fet 02b preamp about 20 years ago which I bought directly from Coda since they had a large number of circuit boards on hand after the model was discontinued so they did a limited manufacturing run to use the spare inventory up.  They were selling them for just under 50% of the original list price.

When I received it there was on input selection which made a noise when I switched to it.  I called Coda up and complained and the tech told me it was most likely an impedance miss match between the cables and the preamp input.  So I swapped the cable to a different input selection and the noise followed it.  After I replaced the cable the sound disappeared and I used that preamp for over 12 years.