![]() He brought his LP12 in and I was able to very carefully remove all traces of that Silly Putty. Years later a customer bought Silly Putty but it was a glow in the dark version and it stuck to his Akiva cantilever. Indeed in cleaning a normal stylus under the microscope the Silly Putty leaves the diamond clean and sparkling. ![]() So he tried every putty material he could get and Silly Putty was the one that didn't stick to the cantilever and left no residue. But he didn't want to leave any particles of the putty nor any oily film behind. Decades ago the owner of the store I work off had the idea that a putty like material would be good for grabbing hold of the small particles you see on the stylus under the microscope. There is a story behind the choice of Silly Putty and also RubOff. ![]() I would definitely NOT recommend poster putty which is too sticky and will leave residue. But what I use most often is either Silly Putty (Original only) or RubOff jeweler's putty. Used under the microscope they leave most of the particles behind whereas the SC-2 will remove the majority. I have tried a number of the other stylus brushes from the likes of Ortofon, Last and others and I really find them to be pretty useless except for removing a fuzz ball. I use it mostly to get fluff of the stylus. The SC-2 is a very dense brush with a nice handle and it will get much of the gunk off many styli but it is not as effective as green paper. A putty type and a Discwasher SC-2 stylus brush without liquid. There are two other cleaning methods I regularly use. Since the Ekstatik is made by EMT, not Lyra, and uses a sapphire cantilever rather than boron there is no way of being completely sure the liquid in SPT is 100% safe with whatever adhesive EMT uses for the diamond tip or the sapphire cantilever to the titanium sleeve/former. ![]() I am not a fan of liquid cleaners and don't use them on any styli. A vibrating pad cleaner and a Discwasher SC-2 would not really touch this hardened gunk at all. The cantilever did receive a few light scratches from all this work but they were small and just on the surface. In the end I had a completely clean diamond, which fortunately had some life left after all that work. This required not only using it on the sides but on the front and back of the diamond and even a bit on the cantilever, with many quick checks under the microscope to see how it was going. Some times a stylus will come in with such a big mountain of charcoal colored gunk on it that you can't even see the diamond under the scope as it is totally buried! The worst of those I had to deal with was caked on really hard and it took me 45 minutes of working with the green paper to get it all off. It is strong enough to break that stuff up and get it off. I have found that there are things that get caked onto the diamond and cantilever, generally with styli that aren't cleaned often, if at all, that can only be gotten off by using the green paper. Quite the opposite it is styli that aren't kept clean that wear out more quickly. I have looked at hundreds, if not thousands, of styli under a high-power lighted stereo microscope and have seen no signs of damage or accelerated wear from the use of green paper. Its use on the stylus is fine and when used as recommended it will have no effect on the cantilever. Green paper is an ultra-fine 3M polishing film.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |