Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler Can you identify this picture?

I wonder how straight the needle looks at 1000x magnification...

I was wondering if that was a new record or one that has been played a number of times. A comparison between a new one and one that has been played fifty or hundred times would be interesting, just to see how much wear the record incurs from playback.

Hi all,

I used to run that picture occasionally back in the vinyl era when I was editing Sound Canada magazine. I think the photo was originally done by Shure, who made perhaps the best cartridges at "staying in the groove", especially highly modulated grooves towards the inner part of an LP. Those would defeat most cheap cartridges unless you used a really high tracking force, like 3 to 5 grams, which would chisel out high frequencies after a couple of plays. The top Shures in a custom arm would track cleanly at 1 gram, even in the inner grooves.

Actually, given how primitive vinyl recording and playback is, it's amazing that it can sound as good as it does--when everything is in alignment. Most vinyl devotees have no idea just how much distortion they are listening to when things get loud or heavy deep bass is recorded, and it increases dramatically as the tonearm tracks inner grooves. Of course, groove noise can effectively mask a lot of distortion, kind of like road and tire noise in a car at highway speeds can cover up a lot of car stereo problems.

Regards,
Alan