Time to change my needle?

[E-Stat]

The guy I bought the cartridge from said if i'm playing for a couple hours a day, I should change the needle after 6 months.

Perhaps in the old days of ceramic "needles", it was necessary to replace after five or six hundred hours. A good cartridge should last a couple thousand.

I know I should probably just go ahead and get it replaced, but I'm wondering if anyone can tell me in general how many record sides can be played with a needle before it needs replacing.

A bigger villain to record wear is simply dirt. Short of buying a record cleaning machine like a VPI, I would get some sort of record brush. As you mentioned, the sound will begin to change once it's worn. In some cases, it is not the stylus itself that has worn - rather the shank has lost its compliance and is causing the sound to be harder and more brittle.

rw

[DaHaq]

I do have a carbon fiber record brush that I use on my records before each play. I also brush the needle before each use with the little brush that came with the cartridge. If a record is quite dirty I will clean it with alcohol, although I can't afford a VPI or Nitty Gritty at the moment. So, I suppose I will just wait until I can hear some sort of sound abnormality before I need to replace the needle? Although I have heard from some that it can damage records even before you hear any sign of it.