I’ve got various carts and styli and some seem to pick up dust / dirt / crud more than others. Probably due to the stylus cut / profile. 

I clean all my record (old and new) when I get them using the knosti system. They are housed in anti-stat inners and all all LPs are in plastic outer covers as well.

The problem I have is with an Audio Technica VM95ml. It picks up a lot of dirt and though a simple brush of the stylus at the end of a side usually gets rid of the dust, there seems to be more persistent dirt that I can’t remove. I’ve used one of those sticky polymer dry cleaning systems. Also I’ve used a flash magic eraser. Either of these usually do the trick, but there’s some darkish looking dirt on the stylus at the moment that I can’t shift. Haven’t got a strong enough microscope to get a really good look unfortunately. 

This has resulted in the sound becoming distorted. So I’ve switched back to the AT440mlb for the moment and all sounds great again. Like the VM, the 440 is a Microline stylus but doesn’t seems to suffer from the same picking up crud problems.

Just wondering if anyone has some “pro” tips for me. 

 

Thanks in advance,

Tim

I use Onzow Zerodust. A bit on the expensive side but has done a vary good job for me in the past and I'm still using it, I do wash it under the tap from time to time. be care full if you decide to buy it as there is a new one starting at £75 which to me is well over price for a bit of gel rubber. I think I paid under £50 for the one I got. You could use it with a brush to clean hard to remove dirt. I like it as you can see the dirt it takes off. I have also seen the darkish dirt stuff on it like what you described. I have heard of people using fine sandpaper, but this is something I can't recommend.

Have a look at CLEANING THE STYLUS in topic search.