Yes they do. They have little rubber suspension mountings that deteriorate over time. Of course, something else in the chain may have deteriorated over time, but that's the more likely cause - or you've got used to listening to CD and can't get your head around the vinyl sound.
<<<<<Posted by Frank Abela on Friday, July 15, 2005 - 09:54 am:
Yes they do. They have little rubber suspension mountings that deteriorate over time. Of course, something else in the chain may have deteriorated over time, but that's the more likely cause - or you've got used to listening to CD and can't get your head around the vinyl sound.
They also oxidize over time. The stylus on the tt my father gave me was about 20-25 years old. The stylus looks like a sewing needle that was burned with a lighter. I don't think that would have made for good sound.
Stu - The diamond stylus can't oxidize. What you are seeing is more likely to be the built up vinyl and pressing compounds which were melted by the friction of the stylus and then scraped off the records by the pressure of the stylus. Your father probably never did a thorough job of cleaning the stylus between records.
Jan - I'm not too good with the technical terms, maybe I gave the wrong idea. The diamond part of the stylus didn't oxidize, the metal part that the diamond part is connected to did. The whole metal arm(?) that holds the stylus looked like other old wires that have oxidized. It looked the same as the exposed part of the ground wire - the grayish black oxidized color. The diamond was fine. If I'm way off, I'm sorry.
The stylus is the diamond bit at the tip of the long metal arm.
The metal arm holding the stylus is called a cantilever.
Typically cantilevers are made of a thin aluminium pipe though some are made of other materials such as boron or even diamond! Aluminium cantilevers always have a grey hue to them. They're dull, never shiny. They should never be white which would indicate corrosion, usually due to exposure to salt (unlikely). Boron cantilevers are dark brown in colour. It sounds like you have a boron cantilever on your cartridge. What's the cartridge? We might be able to tell.
Depending on the cartridge, it could track the record quite heavily. This increases the pressure at the stylus point significantly, raising its temperature and even meliting minute amounts of vinyl which get deposited on the actual stylus itself. The stylus gets a black coating on one side which is quite difficult to remove.
