----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Aaron Levinson" <[log in to unmask]>
> Don-
> You are suggesting that one pass with a very worn stylus produced this 
> kind of greying? That seems kind of hard to fathom considering all
> the other anecdotal evidence that suggests that Mercury and Emarcy seem to 
> exhibit this "record cancer" when almost no other labels do?
> I have seen many records that have been played by a worn stylus and are 
> greying but none that I have ever seen, stop so abruptly as this record 
> does.
>
Very possible! I once inadvertantly did the same thing to a LP disc I owned;
I had bought and installed a new LP needle, which turned out to be either
very damaged or mis-manufactured! I installed the new needle, then started
playing an LP disc...and noticed the disc was being "greyed" as it was 
played!
I took the needle back to the store, where they looked at it with their 
microscope
and told me to STOP USING IT! The disc thereafter played with much noise
audible in the greyed segment...fortunately, the album was still available, 
so I
bought a replacement. I could identify the damaged copy through the fact 
that
the first, and part of the second, cut was visibly "greyed!"

Steven C. Barr