I may have been living under a rock, but in the 30+ years I've been into audio and owned all manner of cartridges, I've never heard anyone suggest Blu Tak as a stylus cleaner. There are many well-established cleaners with a long track record of safety that I would opt for instead.
Stylus cleaners
I used to use Onzo ZeroDust with my first few cartridges years ago. With the last two cartridges, Hana ML, I have only been using the included Hana brush for every side of LP and the MoFi LP-9 liquid stylus cleaner (I get as much fluid out of the brush by pressing it against the neck of the bottle before I clean stylus) every 3-4 records.
Onzo is collecting dust especially since the Fremer’s The Tracking Angle article.
I’ve been looking at DS Audio ST-50 but at $80 I’m not sure it will do anything better than my current cleaning methods.
What’s your stylus cleaning routine?
- ...
- 185 posts total
@richardbrand I’ve been looking at this thing and I can’t pull the trigger. May be some day… |
@lpluvr I’m with you there. We have choices. I just choose not to dunk the stylus of my cartridge into that blue tak thingy. Horses for courses. |
I like to raise and lower the stylus into the gel surface of my DS Audio ST-50 a few times while checking with a Zeiss D40 loupe. Funny thing is, when I do it with my SME 3009 tonearm, the stylus drops at a slightly different place each time. I just raise and lower it with the SME damped lowering device. Maybe the anti-skate device is moving it sideways. With the Holbo air bearing system the stylus drops at exactly the same place each time. There is no anti-skate with a tangential tonearm. I have to move the ST-50 a bit when the stylus is clear to expose a fresh bit of gel surface. The tonearm raising mechanism in the Holbo is very different. The device includes a rod that runs virtually the full length of the tonearm support rod, rather than the very small lifting pad in the SME. It is a different kind of precision |
- 185 posts total