Ignatz Wrobel wrote:
You will notice distortions, if the needle is worn out. I would recommend changing it after roundabout 1000 hours - as a rule of thumb. But, of course, it depends, what kind of needle you use. Usually it's a diamond, but older (mostly crystal/ceramic) systems also use sapphires, which are consumed after ca. 100 Hours of use already. The system itself usually lasts much, much longer, so don't worry, because a needle alone is not that expensive. Goes without saying that a worn out needle damages your vinyls.
Your dealer should be able to check the stylus with a small microscope.
Thanks a lot for your help, Ignatz. I must admit I'm a bit slack about these things, not being skillful at all. I've got the record player for three years, and since its previous owner told me he had just changed the needle before giving it to me, I haven't paid much attention to it. I've just assumed that if it sounded well, it didn't need changing. If I buy a second-hand deck or fix my own, I'll change the stylus first thing. If I buy a new one, I'll have more time to figure out how that's made
. And maybe I'll keep a log at the beginning, until I get a general idea of what 1000 hours of playing are in 'normal' time.
Richard Hawley wrote:
Because i have loads of ancient vinyl i have in recent years used a technics deck cos it has a really savage weighting system but i recently got given one of these
http://www.amazon.co.uk/TDK-Standard-Be ... 370&sr=8-2they are fucking awesome,i used to have a rega deck which got stolen but that was a boss deck too,if you buy a cheap deck they always skip all the time which drives me fuckin mental hope you got what you wanted
Thnaks for your answer! Has the weighting system much importance when one doesn't have very old records? My semi-defunct deck had one of these systems (with what seemed to me to be weight scales for round and oval needles), but I never found out how I should use it, so I always had it mid-way. My vinyl collection is not very big, and the oldest ones are from the sixties, but I have a couple of singles that used to jump here and there, in spite of not having noticeable scratches. Might the weighting system solve that? That TDK deck looks great, but it doesn't seem to have this weighting system, does it? Or is it not very important after all?
(Apart from that, I've seen the TDK has a built-in preamp, which would be great, since my preamp, with its wooden cover, looks like the Flintstones'. But I've seen it works at 120 V and 60 Hz... Is it so? I thought electricity in England was like in Spain, 230 V and 50 Hz.)
Ranting again, since this is the forum for it: my attempt at buying a new resistor for the record player ended up in a conversation about daltonism. And in my buying several resistors, with different combinations of brown, red and purple, to try them all. There's no way to tell the original colours of the stripes!