STYLUS DEVIL
Diablo repeata degroova
RANGE A Stylus Devil comes with every phonograph sold in America. This ear-bending imp is to be found under the machine’s tone arm, hanging in a position convenient to steer minute flecks of ash, hair, and other rubbish toward the needle. If seen, the Stylus Devil will usually run up the tone arm with such great speed that the surprised viewer will “accidentally” drop the arm onto the record, causing the slam and scream of a stylus sliding across the disc and leaving a deep scratch in its wake. This, if anything, is music to the Devil’s ears.
HABITS The Stylus Devil is a most malicious member of a larger group of demons known as the Stereogres, those two-faced folk who pass their time destroying our listening pleasure: tempting components to become incompatible, causing static wow, flutter, etc. The Devil’s own greatest delight is to cause a phonograph record to stick and, when the listener approaches, to cause it to play normally. We may take some solace in knowing that occasionally they laugh so hard at their own cleverness that they fall off the tone arm and come to grief on the needle. Their mashed forms resemble balls of dust.
HISTORY The Stylus Devil appears to be a native American fairy, although creatures of similar habits have been sighted as far away as Germany, Japan and (increasingly) Taiwan. His first appearance may have been in the New Jersey laboratories of Thomas Alva Edison, where his birth was announced by a great howling of neighborhood dogs. Even though he has no history to speak of, the Stylus Devil nonetheless has many relatives, including The Tape Worm, who enjoys snagging cassette tapes into Gordian knots, and the Video Bugger, whose peculiar joy it is to depress the “record” button before you screen your incredibly rare bootleg outtakes from “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.” SPOTTER’S
TIPS It is virtually impossible to sight a Stylus Devil. They are, however, reported to be averse to the music of “Splattered Boots,” an Australian New Wave band, and can be scared off with a sledge hammer, which is unfortunately hard on sensitive turntables.
