The number of hours are both useful information to know if it's time to retire your dear PU to the turntable, or at least buy a new stylus for the MM pickup. Or if you are going to sell the PU to Upgrade, and you want to provide a realistic number of how many hours it has been spent. You may esily be toooptimistic in such a situation, whether consciously or accidentally.

Most of us don`t keep a diary of usage time on a turntable, neither manually or in Outlook. That would be too cumbersome. And to my acquaintance, there are few dedicated tools for the purpose either, so you often use guessing.

Don Lindich has a HiFi and home entertainment website called Sound Advice, and he has done something about this. The StylusTimer product is a kind of watch suitable for placing next to the turntable, and he calls it The Turntable Odometer - a chiometer counter for the turntable, and claims that A Turntable witout the StylusTimer ™ is like a car without an Odometer.

In the user manual, Don Lindich recommends that you add to the habit of pressing "start" with the left-hand on StylusTimer while lowering the tone arm with the right hand. And similarly, press the left hand stop while raising the tonearm after playback. Not exactly HighTek, but at least it plays on human conditional automation.

The StylusTimer may be ordered from the manufacturer and costs $ 19.95 including shipping in the US. In Europe, Tonar International is a distributor

Lightly discounted "boundles" are made with 2 or 5 pieces, which may be intended for those who swap between several PUs

You can read more about the StylusTimer at the manufacturer .