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Dropped $85 on a plastic cutting needle for my lathe and it chattered worse than the $6 one
I got into cutting records on a little Presto lathe I fixed up in my garage here in Sacramento maybe 8 months ago, and I kept reading that the stylus is the one place you should not go cheap. So I ordered an 85 dollar sapphire cutting needle from a small online store, waited two weeks for it to ship, and mounted it up all careful with a bit of paper shim like the old guys say. First test cut on a blank polycarbonate disc and the groove looked fuzzy and the playback had this nasty hiss through the whole side. I checked my heat lamp, my chip pickup, my RPM, everything, because obviously it had to be me and not the expensive needle. Went back to the 6 dollar steel one I started with, cut the same song at the same settings, and it came out quieter with way less chatter. Turns out on my setup the lighter steel tip just rides better, and I burned 85 bucks plus two blank discs learning that fancier does not mean better for a homemade machine. Has anyone else had a pricey needle cut worse than a cheap one, or is it something about my lathe arm that I still haven't figured out?
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