Audio-Technica AT-VMN95SH VM95 Series Shibata replacement stylus

Product Information

A stylus is the incredibly fine part that actually sits in the grooves of your record as it spins, and starts the process of bringing your music to life. Because the grooves on a record are VERY narrow, the design of your stylus makes a huge difference in how much information it can get out of those grooves. And the more information, the more “real” your music will sound when it comes out of your speakers. Getting in shape

There are a couple of exotic shapes intended for the real connoisseurs that I will include for completeness but that, so far, I have no personal experience with and will not discuss for now.Para-toroidal coils improve generating efficiency and offers superb linearity, since leakage of magnetic flux in this continuous and unitised magnetic circuit is low. Permeability of the cores is also optimised through the use of laminated cores. The two most common stylus shapes are spherical styli (also called conical) and elliptical styli (also referred to as bi-radial). Both types have positive and negative attributes… Spherical stylus Because it sits quite wide in the groove, a spherical stylus is cheap to make and really easy to align (that is, get it sitting straight in the groove so that it reads both sides evenly – learn more about alignment here ), you’ll commonly see them on DJ turntables and entry-level hi-fi turntables. The downside is that the broader tip means it can’t get into the groove as well, so a spherical stylus can leave out some of the finer details that make your music sound exciting. As surprisingly good as the SL7 and SL10 turntables are (and they really are much better than most give them credit for), they remain “hifi” turntables, rather than “high-end”. Thus, the above results are far from conclusive.

While there are various other important parameters, these are the two main differentiators among the various stylus shapes. The details of these two aspects and more can be read below in the respective Stylus Shape sections. Bonded versus Nude X 0.5 mil elliptical diamond - most 1905 to 1940's, slightly worn 78s & transcriptions, & some Edison discs. The cross-section of an Elliptical stylus is an Ellipse, which is a flattened circle, created by taking a Conical shape and shaving slivers off the front and rear, as illustrated below. A permalloy centre shield plate enables the effective separation of left and right channels, suppressing electrical crosstalk to below 40dB. This is similar to the actual crosstalk value found in the grooves of the record itself. 700 Series Just like the MicroRidge shape, the cross-section of a SAS stylus is very complex and probably best described as a mini Philips screwdriver shape, as illustrated below.

The grooves of a record are only 2.2 thousandths of an inch (0.0022") wide at the top, and shaped like a V, so a few millimetres difference here and there can make a huge impact on how your music comes out. SAS -Natural single-crystal, nude-mounted octahedral diamond stylus tip ,The stylus tip is of optimum height and a uniformly ultra-precision finish. The Super Analogue Stylus has a curvature with a smaller radius that was impossible with the Micro Ridge Stylus. As thin as a razor blade and machined with ultra precision, the stylus tip ensures unsurpassed fidelity.Polished finish that virtually preserves your record's grooves.World-class polishing technique is used on each stylus. This is designed to preserve the details of the record groove structure for a very long time — virtually for the life of the vinyl. Designed to mimic as close as possible a record cutting head/cutting lathe for highest fidelity & lifespan usually fitted to a precision boron , sapphire , ruby or zirconium ultra light & rigid cantilever I think you can safely play a stylus -any stylus- for at least 1000 hours assuming two things: you keep it clean by dusting off every side with at least a brush and that every few days at least you use a liquid or gel type cleaner, assuming the manufacturer recommends it. Today’s (more advanced) styli wear by softening the ridges or edges. In other words, the severe stylus profiles get rounded. Thus worn styli do not ruin records. So while the sound may somewhat soften and deteriorate (as a result of stylus wear) I don’t believe record wear or ruined records result.”