When do records damage a stylus

Z: A hard "tick" or "pop" is of immense intensity and speed compared to anything recorded onto a disc. If one is playing very "intense" rock music ( which is highly compressed and has a very high average level ) at high spl's, it's quite possible that the added energy from such an intense burst ( far greater dynamic range, faster rise times and no compression applied ) could drive the amp into clipping and pop the tweeters. The same could be said of a classical disc that has a tick / pop that occurs during a crescendo. The amp is already up and running and hitting it with a bigger peak of greater intensity could be just enough.

As a side note, large bursts like a tick or pop can overload a phono stage that has a limited amount of headroom. The distortion from the phono stage being overdriven is then amplified by the line stage and passed onto the amplifier where it dumps into the speaker. Feeding distortion into a speaker is never a good thing. As you can see, the potential for very fast, high amplitude signals and a greater amount of distortions becomes more apparent as one digs deeper into the subject.

I ran into such situations before with some B&W's and Klipsch being driven by very fast electronics. I know others that ran into such a situation with other combo's of equipment. If you do a search on the various forums, you'll find mentions of B&W's having a propensity towards tweeter failure for one reason or another. I'm sure that they are not alone in this category, so i felt a word of general caution was called for.

The saving grace for many in this situation is that their electronics are too slow to respond to such a fast & intense burst ( limited slew rate and rise time ). As such, the signal never reaches full intensity or duration and the tweeters are spared. Faster electronics are more likely to respond to the full amplitude and duration of such a signal, potentially posing more of a risk to the speakers. No, this is not an endorsement or recommendation to buy or use "slow" electronics : )

The obvious solution is to clean your records as best possible. Not only will all of the components and records last longer, the music will sound better too : ) Sean
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Sean - Oh, I've blown tweeters before, but always because I was trying to rock out too much using an underpowered SS amp, or because I screwed around with an upstream connection while the amp was on and the preamp unmuted. But you'll be the first one to know when I blow a tweeter (or damage an amp?) playing a lousy condition record (though I guess you'd just say my tube amps are too slow for this... :-)

Z: Most tube circuits move about as fast as turtles on their backs. Then again, some SS designs i've run across are even slower than that. I've got two SS amps that slew at 5v/uS. Then again, my Dad's old tube preamp used to have a 13 uS rise time. Can you say "sloooooow" but do it VERY slowly : ) Sean
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Y'know, every time I think I'm gonna save up for some test gear so I can get intimate with my system's rise time, I blow my money on records and wind up listening to music instead...

Besides, the 'rise time' I find matters most is the amount of *time* you can spend listening before you're compelled to *rise* out of your chair and turn the system off, and here tubes have the advantage, because longer is better ;^)

As Groucho would say, records break a stylus when the stylus need replacing. And you can afford it if you look at Grado or Goldring. Styli wear badly at something like 500 hours of playing uncleaned unpreserved records. Good cleaning will add a factor of three or five. Well cleaned records tend to become less noisy as the stylus shears off the offending anomolies.

The worst thing I have experienced is when a hard particle becomes wedged in the groove. With good light and a good jeweler's loop (sp?) you can always see them. They are disloged with a needle.

You may have bad alignment which will multiply all problems.

I think we need more detail. How many of your records worry you? What are they like in terms of age and visual condition upon inspection?

What are you using to play them? I confess, this is one of the stranger problems and I am keen to suss it out.

Chin up