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Contact Line stylus - gathering dust on stylus. Help!

Hi everyone,

I recently purchased a moving iron cartridge with a "high profile contact line" stylus.  I bought it because of the reviews that I had read, not because of the stylus profile.  I've had it for over a month now, and while I like the sound there is one VERY significant problem.  The stylus gathers so much dust on it that I can't get through one side of a record without having to get up multiple times to clean the stylus.  I've tried 5 or 6 other cartridges on my set up over the last few years without any difficulties.  I always clean the stylus before every side, usually by dipping it in Moon Gel.  With the other cartridges there is seldom any dust visible in the gel.  With the contact line stylus, there are large deposits of dust every time I dip it in the gel (sometimes even two or three times during the same track).

In over a month I have yet to get through one side of an album without having to clean it.  Often, I have to clean it 4-5 times per side.  This happens on every record, even newly cleaned ones.  It happens whether I've just cleaned the apartment and dusted or whether it's been a while.  I just dropped in two of my old cartridges to compare, and they sailed though record after record without any difficulty.  I guess I could have it re-tipped with a different stylus profile, but I hate to pay to have a brand new cart re-tipped.  

Any thoughts?  (and please, no jokes about my poor housekeeping :))

Thanks, Scott
smrex13
larryi
1,972 posts
 

Wow, I rarely bother to clean my stylus (perhaps once every 8 sides or so) and I have been using line contact styli for a long time.  I suppose it is possible that the stylus is digging up long-deposited crap in the grooves (I hope it is not chewing up vinyl and depositing that on your stylus), but, your experience seems extreme.  if you don't stop and clean the stylus, what happens?  Does it start to mistrack?  It is unclear how extreme the build up is such that it prompts you to stop play. 

My records have been cleaned using a Nitty Gritty machine.  More recently, some have been cleaned using the Audio Desk ultrasonic cleaning machine.  It would help to know something about your record cleaning practice.

smrex13 OP
423 posts
 
Thanks for the responses.  To answer your questions, Larry:  the music suddenly becomes very distorted and muffled when dust gathers on the stylus, so it's not even listenable if I don't clean it.

I use a Record Doctor vacuum cleaner.  I put cleaning solution on the record and clean it with the brush and then vacuum it dry.  I always put it in a new MoFi static free record sleeve after cleaning.  Perhaps I'm not cleaning as well I could?  

Thanks, Scott
raymonda
847 posts
 
Try groove glide or zero stat to remove dust drawing static electricity.
stringreen's avatar
stringreen
5,112 posts
 
I hardly ever use my NittyGritty.....I use  something called a Hunt EBA Mark6 brush right before I set the stylus down....occasionally use a MrClean block, but don't have any problem with my line contact stylus
smrex13 OP
423 posts
 
I do use a zero stat.  To make the problem doubly frustrating, this stylus not only gathers more dust than any other I've used, but even the tiniest amount of dust makes the sound distort.  With other carts I'll sometimes get to the end of a record to find there is a lot of dust but it still sounded good.  With this one, I sometimes dip it in the gel and there is a very tiny spec of dust but the record was distorting horribly.  
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