Needle work: Incredible photos of turntable styli under the microscope

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The secret world of the turntable stylus.

Last week, artist and DJ Trevor Jackson unveiled a new exhibition of super-sized prints exploring the grooves on vinyl records at microscopic level. While most things have a tendency to look pretty alien under such scrutiny (if you’ve not seen it, check out this macro image of a groove magnified 1000x, which looks more like the cavernous surface of the moon), there’s something particularly organic and enticing about Jackson’s vinyl close-ups.

But what about the needles you need to play them? If grooves seem almost cellular at microscopic level then there’s something positively crystalline about the styli.

Aesthetics aside, while most needles will look all but the same to the naked eye, styli do come in different shapes and sizes, a handy little guide to which has been provided by Audio Technica to those of you as yet unable to tell your conicals from your linear contacts.

stylustypes

We’re talking very fine margins here, but having had a quick nosey through this erudite forum on the subject, the shape your needle takes does seem to make a difference, although we’ll be damned if you can hear it. Not to get bogged down in specifics, but the bigger the contact surface area, the better, as this will reduce wear on your records. Likewise, the smaller the side radius, the better a stylus will be at reading high frequencies. Got it?

conical-eliptical-stylus_Popular Mechanics mag_1975

For those with requisite time and enthusiasm can read up further on the various pros and cons of conical styli at www.thevinylengine.com (the users of which we also must thank for these really beautiful photos). For everyone else, it’s probably enough to imagine the whole process of putting on a record like a moon-landing, your shuttle-tipped explorer running amok along a lunar canyon blaring ‘Starman’ across the galaxy, or something like that.

The styli pictured below include well known brands like Ortofon, Audio Technica, Shure, Denon and Stanton. Major props if you can name which is which.


Denon DL16

Adcom XCMRII

Ultra Magnetics 4000D

Ultra Magnetics parabolic_shibata for 4000D

Vms30mkii A

Vms30mki

VDH MC1

ortofon OM30_1

ortofon om30

Stanton_DJ_stylus_spherical

Shure_M_92_Styli_eliptical

ruby 2

Jico SAS on a N97xE

JICOSAS_StylusShureV15_

NOS ADC SuperXLM Shibata

Ortofon Dj E Stylus

gyger s

gyger s_2

Dynavector Karat 23rs 04

Dynavector 17D2

AT-ML150

AT-ML150's

AT-OC9ML:II

AT micro_line