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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?

audphile1
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audphile1 OP
7,882 posts
 

The first picture is of the Hana ML stylus after cleaning it with the Hana included brush:

And here is after cleaning the stylus with LAST stylus cleaner (without treatment):


 

This gives us a pretty good idea on what brushing alone does vs using stylus cleaner. 

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audphile1 OP
7,882 posts
 

@audio-b-dog thanks for the recommendation. I use Humminguru Nova. 
Question - was the degritter part of your routine for at least the most of cartridge’s life before it went to Grado or did it land some time after Joe de-gunked that stylus?

audio-b-dog's avatar
audio-b-dog
798 posts
 

I bought the Degritter after the Grado cartridge had been traded in for another cartridge. The Degritter is about five years old. Joe Grado died in 2015 I think. I think I sent him the Grado Reference in the nineties. I'm an old audiophile.

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audphile1 OP
7,882 posts
 

Thank you for the clarification @audio-b-dog 

In early 2000s I owned Grado headphones (I think they were SR80 or something like that) and they sounded great. I was always curious about Grado cartridges. May be I’ll try one someday. 

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audio-b-dog
798 posts
 

@audphile1 

I owned the same headphones. Although Grado was the first to make a moving coil cartridge, he mostly sold moving magnet cartridges back then. The company may have moved back into moving coil cartridges. I haven't kept up. The Grado Reference was a very smooth cartridge. At $1K, probably one of the most expensive moving magnet cartridges back then. It was a demo on a Thorens turntable and I bought both the turntable and cartridge. 

I later bought a VPI TNT 3 and the cartridge sounded great on the turntable. I now own a VPI Prime Signature 21 with a VPI Shyla moving coil cartridge. It sounds very good. I think I have moved on from moving magnet cartridges, except I have a Clearaudio Maestro Ebony V2 in reserve, which I will send in to be retipped so I can use it when I send in the Shyla to be retipped. Retipping takes a couple months. The Clearaudio Maestro Ebony V2 is a wonderful moving magnet cartridge with a fineline stylus. When Michael Fraemer wrote a review on it, he said why bother with a moving coil when you can get all of that sound out of the moving magnet Clearaudio.

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