BTW, I used to change those 500a styli at about 3 months on the 24/7 radio stations. That would equal about 1000 hours of running time.

Seems like I could hear some loss of quality beyond that.

Of couse, sometimes they got changed before that...of the jock dropped the stylus on the felt while spinning the table backwards. No stylus could survive that! I always used to keep a used stylus in the Staton cube in the studio, next to the turntables...so the clumsy jocks could do a quick swap.

Dave O.