how to diy recordplayer stylus

back in the day, on a show called Mr. Wizards' World, they showed how to make a record player with a piece of paper, a sewing needle, a pencil and 2 pieces of scotch tape! They put tape a round the pencil then through the whole of the record with the tip aimed downword, made a cone with piece of paper and taped the needle to bottom of it! Of course they even said it was bad for records... but ain't science fun?

 

The last one I bought was about ten years ago and it cost me AUD$10. I just has a look on google and depending on the type of turntable that you have, they are anywhere between AUD$20 and AUD$65. Damn that's expensive.

 

Because it's always that expensive we gave up on using the record player, despite a collective collection of around 1000 lp's and singles, now catching dust along with the thorens audio system in the basement.
In the past we tried hard to find a diy-alternative to the buyable replacements for the stylus - it seems to be impossible.
Professional made stylusses use micro sized pieces of sapphire, ruby or diamant, cut/grounded/whettet into size - it has to be gem stone/crystal material, because no other material offers such "clean" or smooth edges after the grounding process.
Jagged and unsmooth edges destroy the vinyl-pressing, simply by eroding the grooves while playing the record, it's like using a sawblade to skate over an ice surface. The same happens if a professional made stylus is worn off, because the sapphire is eroded and get jagged.
We tried every avaliable material, especially metals, ceramics and composite plastics - but the result was always the damaging of the record.
Maybe it's possible to prolong the life span of a professional stylus by restaurating the worn out sapphire - but you would need expert equipment for micro grounding to do it, everything we tried failed badly because the thing is so small and hard to work and it's almost impossible to see the actual result of the amateur-grounding, even with some kind of looking glass or microscope. Too bad that CD almost killed the vinyl...

Sum technical stuff:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_cartridge

 

Following your suggestion of professional stylus-fixing I found a german specialist doing such work with laser-led equipment - but almost completely for audio-systems gone out of production or antique systems like schellack-players. He told me that the high costs come from the expensive equipment and the sheer rarity of demands for his service - his trade lives more from dental technics and micro repairs on other electronical stuff.
Too bad...

 

I was tooling around the net and found I could buy one of those usb turntables that connect to the computer for almost the same price that I could find styli. You can put all your discs on CD or convert to MP3 format.

 

Try going to goodwill or some other thrift stores, they sell used record players for not too much, usually no more then $20.

 

We too consider to buy an usb-device, but reading through the technical stuff looking for recommendations made us very cautious - the technics aren't very advanced by now and the better the offered quality is, the more exensive the turntable gets. Noisereduction and equalizing of the recording are still big problems, most of the audio experts recommend a more than careful research concerning the suitability of the used computer too, you might need a soundcard able to do the job, the turntable should have a switchable stereo phono/line level pre-amplifier - lots of money to be spend...
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... turntables

 

Some years ago there was a electro/audio/video collective working near the train station "am seegraben" in schönefeld - sorry, but i don't remember the exact address or the name of the collective. they did repairs on electronics and sold second hand stuff - i think we still use some devices we bought from them.
maybe searching a city magazine or some scene 'zine for an advertisement would help to find them - i think they used "elektro-kollektiv" in their name.

 

I have a mixing desk and UCA222 (Both from Behringer). Can plug the input from the turntable into desk and run through a professional DAW and can perform all the noise cencellation and equalizing functions in that. Using a laptop with192Kbps sampling rate and 32 bit recording, so no problems there.

 

@ Sound promising, guess it's under licence in europe - shit, forgot the name of the company - but the model number sounds familiar - the price is a bit... but I think it's a good choice.

@ We tried that one too and gave it up again out of pity for the vinyl we tested it with...

Too bad that the schönefeld/seegraben collective isn't any more, they lost the workshop two or three years ago because the house was sold and renovated, but I'll ask someone who worked with them and post the address.