Re: [ARSCLIST] Record cleaning fluid recommendations?

["Steven C. Barr" <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Don Cox" <doncox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> On 16/12/03, H. Duane Goldman wrote:
>
> > Thorough cleaning permits a clean stylus to establish a path of least
> > resistance along the groove & with repeated playback to maximize the
> > fit between the stylus & the groove for improved tracing.
>
> Are you suggesting that the vinyl actually changes shape?
>
> Are you suggesting that this is desirable?
As long as mechanical methods of playing records are used, each playing of
a record causes a change in its "shape"...due to friction and the subsequent
dislodgement of molecules. I don't think it was ever settled on the 78-L
list whether this process, as it applied to steel needles and abrasive
(perhaps intentionally so) shellac-compound discs, was intentional and
the end effect of fitting the needle to the groove for at least much of
one play was intended!

Also, since vinyl is a "plastic" (think of the actual definition of that
term)
substance, there would by definition be a short-term deformation (albeit
very
minor) of the record as the stylus rested upon it during playing. In the
same
way that your head shapes your pillow to itself when rested upon it, the tip
of the stylus (with an exceedingly tiny area involved) would remove or
temporarily relocate some vinyl molecules as it pressed on them...

As far as whether this is desirable...in the short term it would take more
mathematics (and more data) than I have to prove or disprove this...the
function of the groove is to move the stylus along horizontal and vertical
axes in such a way that an electrical signal duplicating the original
waveform results, and insofar as this motion does NOT create an identical
signal that is undesirable. In the long term, the changes in "shape" are
what create what we know as record wear, and thus NOT desirable (but to
a degree inevitable).

The question is, when/if a laser turntable is perfected, will not the laser
beam dislocate a small but finite number of molecules from the disc...and
will not that effect be cumulative, so that a few billion laser plays might
have an audible effect?
Steven C. Barr
Steven C. Barr