a bit OT: Will a 78 rpm record damage a normal stylus?

A couple of years ago, we went to a Burns' Supper in the next village. They had an Irish band - it just wssn't right.

Really?

PA

I think you mean, "It just wisnae right."

Bill

say that in Irish

AIUI the filler in the records was deliberately made so that it was very hard and would wear the steel needles, which were only supposed to be used once. This was the main source of the background noise.

I did once see some needles that supposedly had a diamond tip for longer life. I have no idea what the effect would be on the record.

Chris

So often when watching a TV programme about Scotland, the background music features the uilleann pipes. Presumably they think all pipes are the same!

Chris

According to this, the diamond brings out more of the sound.

And that's why the steel needles for our 78, came in a small envelope, and why there were so many of them.

Whatever wears off your stylus choice, gets deposited in the groove. Like hawthorn fibers.

Paul

BBC 78 rpm program recordings had an overlap between records. So a skilled operator could replay a prog of any length with no gaps. Even easier if transferred to tape or any other editable system. So R4E are doing this for their own reasons.

A cursory glance suggests its just plain wrong.

Everyone knows that you drive a ceramic cartridge into a high impedance

- typically 2Mohms - with no equalisation. Attempting to compensate for loading it with a lower impedance drives you into the area of having to know its capacitance which is not stable, specified, or known.

Today FET opamps like the TL071 ,2 and 4 (1, 2 and 4 opamps in a package) make ideal first stages for a ceramic input.

Indeed so!

Yes. The instruction to "Use needles once only" used to have a for more innocent interpretation

plus that

(" great advantage of this circuit design is that you could plug in a wide-range of ... general purpose NPN transistors and it will work")

a single circuit is not suitable for both MOSFETS and bipolars. Not for either, actually. The high voltage rating of the capacitors are a might over-specified for a 9v circuit.

plus - why is there a 1kohm and a 2k2ohm in series ("requires the least number of components") ?

And that's just a critique of the DC conditions !

PA

Careful, Russ Andrews will revive the idea and start selling styli made from a rare timber grown in a rainforest by a waterfall whose sound of water it has absorbed over decades, the soothing properties of which enhance any recording played back with one. Yours for £2000 each.

GH