Stylus cleaning

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fdlsys

R.I.P 03/2024 Vinylist, DIYer
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There is (too) much debate in this, sensible as well senseless.
Dry or wet... alcohol or not... Ph neutral liquid... clean at all or follow Ivor's (Linn) advice to let the vinyl scrub the stylus...
There are many battles on this subject to be found on the Net. Friendships lost, marriages broken when wives caught their husbands licking the stylus (Ph neutral saliva story).

My normal routine is to dry-clean using the "pan-type" stylus brush (2mm short stiff CF brush, available from Pro-Ject, Ortofon, Last, etc.).
If the diamond shows a blob of black crude on it, dry cleaning won't help. In that case I put a drop or two of IPA onto the brush and clean making sure that no IPA reaches the suspension - diamond tip only.
If the crude is so heavily baked onto the diamond, a drop or two of IPA onto the identical CF pad that is on my Ortofon "hyper-sonic" (not really hyper-sonic vibration but that's what everybody calls it) 9V battery operated cleaner.
A minute on the pad, inspect, repeat if the crud is still evident. Never needed more than 3 cycles even for extreme cases and let me tell you, those were disgusting.

My take has always been:

RCM clean your records and keep them clean. Fingerprints are bad. Anything leaving a film of any type of residue that dust can cling onto is bad. Use CF brush before playing the side.

I use my own cleaning liquid concoction described in the "cleaning" thread. Aside from the usual 9:1 ratio of distilled water:IPA, It contains minute amount of Kleen Green for decent detergent action and 4-5ml/litre of Ilford's Ilfotol wetting/rinsing agent which also very effectively prevents static build-up afterwards.

This concoction has been derived from what I found on the Net about US library of Congress and UK National Archive cleaning liquids which result from decades of research.
Detergents that they use are specific to their markets but they are not rocket science. Since I could not find those in SA, I experimented.
A few years later, I settled on Kleen Green as pretty perfect for the porpose. Mild, no residue left after LP is vacuumed.

I claim that if you follow this, you won't need frequent stylus cleaning.

Customary 1000 words worth below.

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Pic shows one my favourites; Signet TK7 cartridge with its original TKN2 Nude Shibata stylus that has played a few 100s of LP sides since being cleaned the last time.

Aside from lens/sensor aberrations and a tiny spec of buildup on the "outgoing" side of the diamond which does not affect playback, there is nothing else to see.
NB: This diamond in real life (view through a 60x magnifying glass) is about half the thickness of what it appears to be in this photo - lack of perfect focus and digital aberrations make it look much thicker than it really is.

My 0.02
 
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