Am I totally nuts or just a bit off?

Mapman, never thought of that but having had a pr of 2XO once I'm sure that's true !

VIRIDIAN, I take your point on the M78 stylus , thanks.

Going thru my stash I found a NOS N70B shure stylus with an .0006 radius vs a .0025 for the M78, would this meet your criteria?
Truth be told I don't even know what a um is,all I ever studied was history.

Schubert, the N70b has a .6 mil stylus, which is about 15 um, it also has the conical profile that you prefer. It will certainly ride lower in the groove than the M78, and some of the results will be related to if there is any groove damage in your records, and in what part of the groove that damage occured.

Why not give it a try and report back with your findings, pro or con? It is certainly the preferred size for the records that you are playing.

Good mono recordings are also very useful as a reference standard to help get things set up well for stereo. If you get a solid and full nicely centered and focused image with good mono recordings, chances are the speaker setup will be pretty well optimized for stereo at that point as well. Its much harder to use stereo recordings as a reference in that there is so much variability in how the stereo channels are utilized from recording to recording.

Truth be told I don't even know what a um is,all I ever studied was history.

:-)

"um" = "micro-meter" aka "micron" = 1 millionth of a meter = 1 millionth of about 39.37 inches.

"mil" = thousandth of an inch.

15 um = 0.00059 inches = about 0.0006 inches = 0.6 mils, as Viridian indicated.

Regards,
-- Al