As many of you know, I just got my tables in November. Prior to that I haven’t had a turntable since, oh I don’t know…eighth grade? We never did anything like clean the stylus back then and they were those crap tables built into really 70’s looking wood structures.
Recently, I had someone comment on one of my mixes that the hats sounded distorted in bits. I’d never noticed and I listen to my mixes a lot. Last night I took a break from Ableton to just spin a few records, and upon listening, realized there was some hat distortion and some serious ‘s’ issues. Looking back through my playlist, the same table was producing the issues. So I researched and found out a number of things:
clean your stylus regularly (I merely brushed them every few weeks with the brush that came with the cartridges)
the distortion could be a number of things: poorly worn records, especially older, second-hand records; (both of the records in question are second-hand and older) bad tonearm height; (mine are merely “eyed,” but appear level) bad cartridge mounting; (I bought them pre-mounted, although it’s very possible that the mounting is still off - need to check this) bad weighting of the tonearm; anti-skate level adjustment
I swapped out the cartridge with a barely used cartridge and the ‘s’ issues still existed. Even on the other deck, the issue was there. Anti-skating was the only thing I could do that seemed to help, (although not completely) as anti-skating was set to 0 on both my decks. It did appear to clean up the hi hat distortion though.
So, what level is your anti-skating set at?
And…the more important question: I see many audiophiles stating they brush their stylus after every side played - some clean theirs religiously with various products, not just the brush. This seems like overkill for a DJ. How often do you brush your stylus? How often do you clean your stylus, (more than merely brushing it) and what do you use to do so?
And the final question - what’s your method of cleaning your records? I have a number of older records and continue to look for a lot of older stuff. Groov Glide seems to help, but do you go full-on with a water cleaner and vacuum?
Mine get a bath in isopropyl alcohol overnight and a few runs in an ultrasonic cleaner (again with iso) for a thorough clean.
For a quick clean I use a small artists paint brush with a little iso.
You didnt say which carts and styli you’re using but there should be some recommended settings for the weight and anti skate on the manufacturers website or the instructions that came with them.
This ViperFrank video explains what the anti skate does and how to set it correctly
And to clean the records … a mix of iso alcohol and water in a spray bottle and a microfibre cloth for a deep clean and a rodec brush for a quick wipe.
Sorry, using Shure M44-7’s. Recommendations are +3 on the weight and 0 for anti skate. That’s what they were set to. However, this video was awesome in explaining what it’s used for and how to set it. At 0, my decks were way off. One needed to go the full way up to 3, the other to 2 1/4 or so. But, even with those settings, I still get the hissy s. (technical term)
I’ll definitely take your cleaning tips as well though.
Weighting shouldn’t have a set number. You should balance your own weight, that is REALLY easy to do. Same with the antiskate.
ViperFrank is awesome.
Hissy sounds I really doubt it’s anti-skate. Definitely more a connection or dirtiness of the stylus/record. You can just get a magic eraser and lightly touch the stylus on the eraser to clean it. Cleaning the records, I would pick up a nice Nitty Gritty or one of those top tier vacuum cleaners if you have a large number of records that you are using. Otherwise a Spin Clean or something of the sort will work.
Anti skate gets messed up all the time…especially when people replace tone arms that have no idea what they are doing. That being said, if it doesn’t work like you saw in the above video then the pivot screws are most likely out of wack which can be tricky to adjust. Most the time I just buy and install a new tone arm but now they are so expensive I have found myself rebuilding tone arms.
Even if the anti skate isn’t 100% you can still have a stable tone arm. Also, you 1200 has to be almost perfectly level for the anti skate test to work
