Stylus help?

[Edisonfan]

I have a question? I recently did an experiment to see if I could play a Diamond Disc on my Audio-Technica turntable, using the stylus for my microgroove Lp's . My question is this. Should I continue using the LP stylus, or look for a better one? Also, People tell me I need to reverse the channel's in order to get better sound. How do I do that? Since my turntable just plays through a pair of TEAC Powered Speakers. Thanks for any help?


Paul

[Lucius1958]

Well, I would assume you would first have to rewire the cartridge for vertical playback. Then you'd have to find a stylus that's close enough in dimension to the original.

I believe there's a thread on that subject here; but at the moment I don't have the time to find it out....

Bill

[John Svensson]

There are still firms out there that make wider mil styli for 78s that are more suitable than the standard 33 ⅓ microgroove version...LP Gear, Kabusa USA I believe come to mind. If I recall, Tim Gracyk's website had a pretty nice page about styli diameters and playing various 78s. Do a search and ye shall find. What kind of cartridge do you have, I believe "reversing the channels" in this context refers to changing the 4 wire inputs to your cartridge.

[John Svensson]

P.S.- See Esoteric Sound's website, they make a 3.0 mil stylus for Diamond Discs....though they seem to just sell P mount cartridges, so how you re-wire that for vertical playing?? I'm sure someone else has that answer.

[VintageTechnologies]

Here is a wiring diagram that depicts the back of your stereo cartridge. As you can see, only one lead would have to be run from the turntable to the amplifier. I use a Y connector to direct the mono to both stereo channels on the amp.

As a convenient alternative, I have toyed with the idea of building a little switch box that sits between the turntable and amp, rather than switching around leads at the cartridge itself. The only downside is the possibility of introducing line noise.

I suggest finding a stylus that most closely fits the groove. The tiny microgroove point surely meanders all over the bottom of a larger Edison or Pathé groove.

[gregbogantz]

These topics have been covered pretty extensively in this forum. So, you can do a search of the archives for more details. But to address the two primary questions:

1. The size of the stylus used when playing vertical cut records at a light tracking force with a modern cartridge is not very important. The stylus is MEANT to sit on the bottom of the groove, not to be held above the bottom and supported by the groove walls as is the case when playing lateral cut records. So the only size limitation is not to have it be too big such that it does not sit on the bottom of the groove. Any conventional size stylus from about 3 mils and smaller will do. A light tracking force of 5 grams or less will do very little damage to the record, regardless of stylus size. I use a conventional .7 mil stereo stylus in a Stanton 681 to play both Edison DDs and Pathé Sapphire discs on a Dual 1218 turntable tracking at 2 grams with completely satisfactory results. Skating across grooves can be a problem due to the shallow nature of these grooves. So, using a modern tonearm with the anti-skate compensation feature is recommended.

2. Wiring the cartridge as shown above is one way to do it. The suggestion that you use a switch to reverse the wires of one channel to change from lateral to vertical playback is OK, provided that the ground terminals of the two cartridge channels are independent and that neither one is connected to the record player chassis. Check the cabling in the player to make sure that the shields of the coax cables are not connected to each other or to the player chassis. Many magnetic cartridges have a link on the cartridge body that grounds one channel's ground pin to the cartridge body which is also connected to the player chassis. This may cause unexpected results with loss of one channel and/or hum if you add a switch to this channel.

Merely playing back a vertical cut record on a conventional stereo player will produce sound thru both channels. But the audio will be out of phase between the two channels and sound odd with the "hole-in-the-middle" effect when listening to both speakers. Switching the polarity of one channel will correct this phase problem. Electrically connecting both channels together, either by paralleling them out of phase or hooking them out of phase and in series as in the above diagram will cancel out the lateral modulation which will give less noise than not combining the channels. Similarly, paralleling the channels in-phase or hooking them in phase and in series will cancel the vertical noise and produce the best results when playing lateral cut records.

[Edisonfan]

Thank You for the help!

[RefSeries]

If you want further help try contacting Expert Stylus at [email protected]. I have found them both helpful and knowledgeable and have a number of their styli both on my machines and in modern cartridges.