Stylus cleaners

@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. 

@audphile1 

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

@richardbrand that makes sense with different tonearm designs. 
I looked at the stylus after playing each side of several different LPs and it has almost no visible debris. All my records were either washed manually or most recently re-washed before playing with the Nova ultrasonic machine. The vinyl is actually very clean. I use either the Hana white stylus brush or the MoFi one that came with the LP9 and it never picks up anything that I can see with a naked eye. I will test it with my ZeroDust if it picks up anything after the stylus was brushed. 

I use a US stylus cleaner, have for about a year and a half, no issues, but a black background when listen to records. 

Hummingguru S-Duo