Plastic phonograph needles - Has anybody tried them?

[russmovaz]

I have an idea to reuse steel needles by sanding the tip back into a sharp point.

Why not take an old 78 record and glue a piece of 220 sandpaper to it, place it on a turntable, and hold the used steel needle in a pair of pointed-nose pliers at an angle, rotating your hand as the record sandpaper spins?

Just a few revolutions and a twist of the wrist, and you have a niece sharp point on your old needle.

The sand-paper record should last for a hundred needles

[Retrograde]

Maybe with 15000 grit, but you'd have to make sure it removed the entire worn out point and didn't just make a fat blunt tip. Inspection under a digital microscope would be a must. The tip of a steel needle is pretty abused after one side of a record.

Not worth the effort in my opinion.

[AZ*]

However, one good thing has indirectly resulted from this experiment: I have (belatedly) learned of the BCN cactus-thorn needles made by our colleague Orchorsol, using equipment and methods developed in the 1920s, and distributed through his website http://www.burmesecolourneedles.com/. These have been a revelation.

I also learned about these recently. A dealer at the Union show was handing out limited samples of the BCN needles along with a card containing Orchorsol's website address. I haven't tried the needles yet, but plan to as soon as I can find my cactus needle sharpener.

I agree with Retrograde regarding difficulties in re-pointing steel needles. It is hardly worth it anyway as quality steel needles are available at less than 3 cents each when purchased in quantity.

[VanEpsFan1914]

I have an idea to reuse steel needles by sanding the tip back into a sharp point.

Why not take an old 78 record and glue a piece of 220 sandpaper to it, place it on a turntable, and hold the used steel needle in a pair of pointed-nose pliers at an angle, rotating your hand as the record sandpaper spins?

Just a few revolutions and a twist of the wrist, and you have a niece sharp point on your old needle.

The sand-paper record should last for a hundred needles

Good idea in theory, but terrible in practice. You'll end up with microscratches all over your needles and that means mega scratches on your records. Good needles cost a nickel...just saying.

This whole thread I am going to remember in my "silly needle substitute" archive--along with the sewing machine needles, straight-pins, rose thorns, thumbtacks, osmium jukebox styli, and other things that have no place near a Victrola or 78s.

(Sorry...that was a little harsh.) But I don't know of any safe way to do it. You would need a jig of some sort, not pliers...and perhaps a more precise abrasive wheel than a Victrola platter.

[Retrograde]

This whole thread I am going to remember in my "silly needle substitute" archive--

I was thinking about toenail trimmings. I can get some whoppers every few weeks!

[VanEpsFan1914]

You win.

[Orchorsol]

However, one good thing has indirectly resulted from this experiment: I have (belatedly) learned of the BCN cactus-thorn needles made by our colleague Orchorsol, using equipment and methods developed in the 1920s, and distributed through his website http://www.burmesecolourneedles.com/. These have been a revelation.

I also learned about these recently. A dealer at the Union show was handing out limited samples of the BCN needles along with a card containing Orchorsol's website address. I haven't tried the needles yet, but plan to as soon as I can find my cactus needle sharpener.

Ah, that would have been my pal Darrell.

I'm more than happy to send anyone a few free samples (hoping I don't get flooded with too many requests however, haha) plus and a little abrasive strip! In the absence of a proper sharpener it's possible to sharpen them by hand with a little care, and you only have to take the tiniest amount off the needle each time.

Many thanks Oliver for the glowing report yesterday.

[Inigo]

When young and poor collector at 18yo, and without the web not any email, I hadn't still access to the myriad of resources for side parts nor needles. At that early collecting era, 1978 in Madrid, Spain, I had the luck to find a record shop in Madrid that still had hundreds of NOS 78s. They kind women, daughters of the original owner that opened the shop in the early thirties, still charged 78s by the latest price they had back in 1962 (50 ptas, $0.75 by 1978) so I could buy two or three records with my weekly assignment. These women also sold little capsules of 10 steel needles/each, of a special class, very rare. They were golden colour, with fine point, and the type that has two small ears at the sides (double tone needles?). They had the brand DOGANDBABY stamped on each needle. I used to buy those, that were actually still being made by FOX, our Spanish supplier of record player styli, which still made steel needles for Gramophones. They were pretty expensive (maybe teen needles for the cost of two 78s or so). So I developed a home industry to sand the needles and render them reusable. Soon I discovered that sandpaper was not an option, for the same cause VanEps has said: the sanded points are irregular and unpolished, and this destroys records very fast. I found a suitable solution, to sand the needles using a flat soft quarz stone. What I was doing indeed was to re-polish the points by hand until I got uniform soft points. These reused needles worked very well, and I used them to play my then short record collection. Those needles were not that bad, as still those very same records are in my collection and sound very well still after 35 years of weekly playing... The first ten or so years they were weekly played with my reused polished needles...

This is a chant for the quality of 78s, and the softness of the quartz stones!

Still I keep the hand tools to resharpen steel needles, and the quartz stones. Still I maintain the habit of keeping the natural quartz stones I find when in a country walk. Still I keep the habit of storing the used steel needles, for a foreseeable future in which they would become scarce or very expensive!
Things one mad gramophone collector does!

[52089]

This whole thread I am going to remember in my "silly needle substitute" archive--

I was thinking about toenail trimmings. I can get some whoppers every few weeks!

"You kids today think computer viruses are so terrible. Back in my day we had to deal with record fungus! Got all over everything!"

[russmovaz]

So I developed a home industry to sand the needles and render them reusable. Soon I discovered that sandpaper was not an option, for the same cause VanEps has said: the sanded points are irregular and unpolished, and this destroys records very fast. I found a suitable solution, to sand the needles using a flat soft quarz stone.

This is a chant for the quality of 78s, and the softness of the quartz stones!

I like this posting - very near to my heart. I am a PhD mechanical engineer, retired, and I have some experience with machine tools and metals. That does not make me any kind of an expert on 78 RPM needles however.

I understood that the new steel needles wear into the first few grooves, as the record plays, because of the abrasives inherent or added to the shellac material. To me that means that it doesn't matter if the steel needle has an initial perfect polish or point, since the needle gets modified within the 1st few rotations.

Evidently I am WRONG and that it is important to have a polished steel needle at the start. I don't understand the physics, and I assume someone will educate me on this subject.