How to maintain records

[ghostinthemachine]

HEY??

Not queried out of sarcasm or any motive but to learn. I have had a lifetime with vinyl but hardly ever uses it lately.

If those were adjusted spot-on to begin with, why would they wear? Load is almost nil, as is rotational wear. The greatest 'action' for them comes when we lift or lower the tone-arm.

Which leaves wear because of arm vibration. But that is supposed to be umpteen dB lower than stylus vibration. So are we perhaps talking here of poorly adjusted/machined bearings to begin with? Otherwise I would like to be enlightened.

I agree... the arm is an Origin Live Silver. Fitted with high spec ball bearings that is unlikely to wear out in the next 3 decades with normal use.

Having said that, there is/was some brand-name Japanese amps with very delicate bearings. One false move and the bearings was permanently damaged. Audio-Technica comes to mind.

[ghostinthemachine]

Having pondered about your problem Moog... is that I assume you do take good care of your vinyl records and what happened/s is that the records became noisy due to foreign contaminants (air-bourne dust and nasties).

I have a whole bunch of brand new vinyls, some of them +5 years, and from time to time I need to wash them so that they will sound as good as the day I bought them. Simple as that. Now you dont need to buy a record cleaner to wash them. See this technique: http://www.highendaudio.co.za/pdf_documents/HEA%20Record%20Cleaning%20Procedure.pdf

[Moog]

Having pondered about your problem Moog... is that I assume you do take good care of your vinyl records and what happened/s is that the records became noisy due to foreign contaminants (air-bourne dust and nasties).

I have a whole bunch of brand new vinyls, some of them +5 years, and from time to time I need to wash them so that they will sound as good as the day I bought them. Simple as that. Now you dont need to buy a record cleaner to wash them. See this technique: http://www.highendaudio.co.za/pdf_documents/HEA%20Record%20Cleaning%20Procedure.pdf

Eish Ghostinthemachine, thanks for the tip. Looks like i will have my work cut out over the easter holidays. Will certainly give a number of disks a wash.

[Hi-Phibian]

moog, give me a call and let's set something up over those holidays. We will give the deck the once over wrt to the various parameters and spy out that wee diamond.  Then we can stick the offending Lps through the Moth cleaning machine and see about that too as I tend to agree that it's the discs that need looking at first.

[Hi-Phibian]

With regard to tone arm bearing wear this is most often tone arm bearing damage, not wear. Badly transported, badly handled or sometimes over tightening. Some arms use the arm pillar as races for the bearings (some linn models for eg) and over tightening the VGA arm collar can distort them.
Sometimes it is just crud and goop that can be hard to get out or even corrosion.

Care should be taken when mounting, fitting, packing or moving an arm.

[placebo]

I think I should have been more specific.The arm bearings were damaged either when I transported the T/T to be repaired and serviced by an Audio shop or were damaged by the Audio shop themselves.I am not sure exactly how.However Hi-Phibian gives a  good example of how it can happen.

[Moog]

Hi-Phibian

I will certainly call you. The new-fangled device needs to be inspected.