"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message

In article ,
Stephen Worth wrote:
In article , Jim
Lesurf wrote:

I'd be interested to see some references to some
research/measurement reports that support the above as
a generalised assertion about "elliptical tipped"
cartridges.

This is info that goes back to the LP era. Do some
googling. You'll find it. You might try looking for
references to stylus shapes intended for transcription
as opposed to everyday use.

I have tried searching my set of AES CDROMs that contain
all the issues
of JAES, etc, prior to a couple of years ago, but found
no references which relate to your assertion that:

"An elliptical tipped cartridge needs alignment every two
to three months."

Indeed, there is no logical reason that this would be true.

An associated but *completely different" claim would be that the SQ of an LP
degrades more for a given misalignment with an elliptical stylus as opposed
to a conical stylus. However, if one were to test that claim there would
probably need to be some way to account for the fact that the elliptical
stylus hopefully worked better to begin with. Performance thus had further
to fall.

I found many articles which deal with other factors, but
nothing on that which I noticed.

Alas, you have not given any references, just told me to
look for them, which looks like you have none in mind
when you made your assertion. However if you do, please
let me know.

You are familiar with the word "posturting"? ;-)

Think about the shape of an elliptical stylus... imagine
it contacting the groove a little bit off angle. One
side will contact harder than the other.

Irrelevant to small misorientations of an elliptical stylus.

A conical
stylus is symmetrical. It can be a little twisted one
way or the other and it still contacts the groove the
same.

More likely in either case - when you misorient a stylus you probably had to
misorient and/or misposition the cartridge. That plays hob with things like
tracking error. Unfortunately for Worth's claim, tracking error is a bad
thing, regardless.

The above strikes me as rather an over-simplification.
:-)

Did I hear that in a high end audio salon back in the day? It is clearly a
claim based on assertion, not theoretical or experimental results.

However the issue I was questioning was the claim that the
alignment changes sigificantly in the timescale you
state. I have found articles that
do deal with the geometry and wear, etc, but not seen
anything on that point as yet.

Another approach might be to show that an elliptical stylus significantly
changes the forces on the arm in such a way that the arm either bent, or its
pivots wore out faster, or some such. Again, I don't see a lot of hope for
that even though I seem to recall that elliptical styli did require
different amounts of anti-skate. There is probably some difference in the
forces applied to the arm, but would they be enough to bend it? I don't
think so!

Alignment does NOT stay the same. If you use your
turntable regularly, things move around as you handle
the tonearm. Elliptical stylii need to be aligned every
three to six months with everyday use.

I don't know why the type of stylus would change how I handled the tone arm.


Yet my experience over some decades of using LP replay
systems
with non-'conical' styli did not agree with your theory.
Although
it has been some time since I used LP on an 'everyday'
basis. But I did do so for many years.

I was spinning vinyl back in the days when the first elliptical styli came
out. Lots of us upgraded existing cartridges to use them, even though our
existing conicals were in good shape.

For all I know, you are correct. But I haven't found any
assessable evidence, not have you provided any, nor does
my experience indicate
that you are right. So unless you are able to provide
some specific reference that I - and perhaps others -
could examine, I am afraid I
will have to doubt your assertion. :-)

Hold that thought!