How Many Needles Do You Go Through?

[mick_vt]

I probably get through about 20-30 a week. With "new old stock" packs of steel needles fairly readily available on ebay around $10 for a hundred I have been using period ones almost exclusively. I like the shape and quality of the period needles much moire than I do the modern production

[travisgreyfox]

The following may be controversial and I am not urging anybody to follow my example; I merely report my own experience.

In April 2017 I bought one of the common BCN needle-sharpeners, a simple hand-operated device intended for preparing fibre needles. I decided to see whether it would work on steel needles as well. I bought some 1500-grit sandpaper (a very much finer grade than that originally used in these tools), cut a disc from this to fit the circular plate of the device, and tried it out on some 'Songster Pick-Up' needles – a type, designed to play fifteen sides, which I have used almost exclusively for the last thirty-five years. Altogether I recycled seventy needles in this way.

Since then I have used precisely one new needle (this being because my cat was sitting on the lid of the H.M.V. table gramophone in which I keep the re-sharpened needles and I did not want to tip him off). Otherwise I have lived entirely on the original seventy, some of which have been recycled three times. I use them on records of all periods from 1896 to the early 1950s* and have never encountered any ill effects. They will normally play about twelve sides each, so that they are nearly as good as new. I suppose I use one needle every couple of weeks on average.

Each disc of sandpaper will serve for about ten needles. With a new disc, twelve to fifteen half-turns of the handle of the BCN will bring a needle up to the mark; when the disc is near the end of its life, this will increase to perhaps forty half-turns. After working on a needle I inspect it by turning it round and round in a strong light; if I see a bright flash, indicating that a flat spot on the needle is catching the light, I sharpen it again; if it still shows a flat after three sharpenings, I reject it as beyond further use. I still have over fifty needles from the original batch. I test each needle on a run-out groove or a blank portion of the record before committing it to the main grooves, very much as one is recommended to do with 'Tungstyle' or similar long-playing needles. I have not yet ploughed up any opening grooves.

The Pick-Up needles are survivors from a bulk lot of, I think, 5000 which I bought in the early 1980s; besides their greater convenience, I felt these were more precise and consistent in finish than the single-usage needles then available which might well include a 'rogue' needle, with a jagged tip, in every box. At one time I thought I was down to 300 of these and almost gave up playing my records in consequence, but then I found nearly a thousand which I had put in a drawer when I moved to my present home in 1987 and had subsequently forgotten. Now, with the help of the BCN (which cost about GBP15.00), it looks as if I am provided for many times the above-mentioned cat's allotment of lives.

Oliver Mundy.

*These are all shellac records. People in the U.S.A. may not be aware that the vinyl materials used for some 78s in the 1940s were never adopted here in England, probably because so many people were still using acoustic machines and especially those of the portable variety.

I would be to scared to even try this method. Sometimes when I use the same twice for a non-valuable record I get a guilty feeling, knowing that I may be messing up a record for future generations. After all, we are just temporary custodians of our machines. We will die and hopefully someone younger will buy them and enjoy them long after we are gone. I would hate to ruin even the cheap non valuable records.

Just my 2 cents.

[Estey Organ]

I lost count a long time ago. But since I purchased an Orthophonic machine and had Wyatt Markus rebuild the reproducer I’m using soft and medium needles like crazy. Just ordered 1000 soft and 500 medium needles. That should last me until the Wayne show. LOL

[Estey Organ]

Then there is the friend who last purchased 100 needles in 2005. Last time he visited he said “Your records sound so beautiful. I suppose you change needles every record.” I said no, every side.