Stylus cleaning

Yesterday I received a package from Mehran of Sorasound. I had ordered a stylus force gauge (how had I lived without one?) and an Onzow zerodust in a package deal. First off, Mehran was very pleasant to deal with. His package arrived via USPS as fast as can possibly be expected.

I first checked my VTF, amazingly it read 1.85-g only 0.05 g over the recommended for the AT 440Mla that's been my main squeeze for over a year. This carts got well over 1000 hours on it, and while I regularly alternate between a b&o stylus brush and the AT brush that came with the cart, there has been a slow accumulation of crap building up on the back of the sylus.

With that in mind I had purchased a magic eraser (ME) per Doug Deacon's recomendation on audioasylum. While the vinyl asylum (VA) is often filled with people jocking the gear and tweaks that they've purchased and/or tried ad infinitum/nauseum there is occasionally the random gem of info. However, the use of ME comes with several warnings of people who have lost their stylus in the material. So, tenderly, with the volume on, I lowered the cart onto the ME hearing a slight crackle, and let it set for a couple of seconds before raising the cart with the arm lever.

Nope, there was still some gunk back there. Not quite visible with the naked eye, but easily visible with my loupe. (Why I have a loupe is quite a different story, but hey, it was free!). That was last week. I was hoping the zerodust would be able to take of that for me.

and it did. The cart sounds like it did at 100 hours. Shallbehealed class (A*+)^3 recommended. The wife likes it too. (ie, takes up no space in our house, didn't have to take out the equivalent of a home loan, and makes our system sound better.)