DIY bamboo needles and needle doping

[anchorman]

I’m still curious how hard is too hard… surely at some point there is risk of damage to the records if they get too hard?

Well, it's never going to be as hard as steel, so I think you'd be safe.

Depends… some things wear better than others. If the needle is meant to be abraded away, but the material is somehow too tough, yet still too soft to keep a point, could have some consequences for record wear. There’s more to it than meets the eye, and trying to understand it all is as interesting a way to pass the time than anything else a person could be doing.

[Inigo]

It's funny and interesting. Maybe needles were already much experimented with, but other things in gramophone design were not actually carried to perfection, yet one can still improve things easily, as with the discussed (in other threads) short elbow to correct tracking alignment in the early tonearms... That simple attachment makes tracking much better, and improves performance both of records and needles...

[anchorman]

Needles were already much experimented with, but much of that knowledge gained has also been lost over time.