bapu
BAT plz.
 

 
By request.

Bhav
Do those groves wear out though, causing a degradation of audio quality or not?

Now I really feel ancient

Kalle Rantaaho

Bhav
Do those groves wear out though, causing a degradation of audio quality or not?

Now I really feel ancient

He he 

Bhav
Do those groves wear out though, causing a degradation of audio quality or not?

 
Well it sort of depends. Yes and no.
 
No if you only use the right gear to play the vinyl on the turntable. I have had a state of the art turntable since the mid 70's. Fitted with finest arm ever made, SME of course with that incredible head shell. (When the arm is balanced, a small puff of air from you across the room causes the arm to move a few seconds later. Is that low bearing friction or what folks!)
 
And the cartridge for me is a Shure V15 Mk 3, possibly the finest pickup ever made too. With that famous elliptical stylus. (Min contact area on the groove wall) Tracking at about 1.2 grams.
 
So what does it all mean. I bought a pristine imported copy of Dark Side of the Moon for example and to this day there is not a single crack or any groove wall noise to speak of. Or any noise. It is dead silent and I mean silent. And how does the music sound, well pristine comes to mind and today it sounds the same as it did when it first came out. All the fine detail is still present. Only because it has only ever been played on this turntable of mine. So when the playback technology is this good yes it stays pretty well the same for a very long time.
 
And to add. A few things. I clean my vinyl with one of those Decca record brushes that have a million bristles. e.g. they are so fine they can get deep in the groove. Also I use a Rexon cleaner which is another type of arm on the turntable that has an electrostatically charged very soft pad on the end. It actually cleans and pulls the dust out of the groove as the record plays. And also I never drop the stylus at any part into the side of the album (Hi Fi enthusiasts consider a serious no no) e.g. the stylus is only set down at the very start and lifted at the very end. 
 
But unfortunately most turntables are like a nail playing a record like that and at about 2 or 3 or 5 times that weight pressure. So no. Not a hope in hell in the grooves remaining intact for very long.  Can you appreciate the difference here.
 
What DJ's do to vinyl I won't even go into here! 
 
Last time I bought my stylus (yes just the stylus folks it was $500!. If I even reversed the motion of the turntable like a DJ for a fraction of a turn that $500 stylus would be destroyed!
 

When I was a DJ we used to hold the record so we could look across the face.  If it was black, it was still good but, if it was gray, then the grooves (and maybe the groves too ) were flat and the record was thrown out.

My first 'record player' was a piece of junk. Had to weigh down the needle-arm with a taped nickel (U.S. $.05) or two to keep it from jumping around. Unfortunately those records are now all pretty much ruined. Poverty has its downsides.

craigb
I was expecting to see a Les Paul.  My bad.

Same! :)

lol... I've seen that first pic before but without context I always thought it was some large exotic bird pecking at a groomed soil/sandy surface.
 
Freaky deaky.

It is amazing the peaks of reproduction quality vinyl has reached though. A case in point are those Sheffield Lab albums form the 80's. I have got a bunch of them including an album by Dave Grusin. (Discovered Again) with Ron Carter, Lee Ritenour, Harvey Mason and Grusin himself. The music is wonderful on that album. 
 
The Sheffield Lab thing is they bypass the whole Multitrack tape path and create the mix in the studio for these guys live and feed the cutting lathe! The transient response from the Shore V15 III pickup is breathtaking. Snap, punch, kick, the cutting edge of a cowbell, OMG! It is almost like digital. (I believe digital is still better in this department) The groove surface noise is there but it is way low on my system.  They only pressed a limited number of albums from these masters too. Then I believe they got them in and did it all again. Different solos. And yes the vinyl sounds the same for me today as it did then too.
 
Another famous pickup was the Ortofon SL15Q possibly the most musical pickup ever made too. (moving coil) Instead of Moving magnet. Puts out super weak signals and requires a preamp too even bring it up to MM levels. Similar to a ribbon microphone in terms of levels being very low. They had transformer preamps and active. Both sounded different but amazing. The RIAA pickup equalising preamp too is also super important. I blew $1000 on one in the 80's to give you an idea. It kills anything inside any standard stereo Hi Fi amplifier by far. I nearly fell over when I heard this RIAA preamp. Electronic music is also jaw dropping on my setup too.
 
It is these mastering guys who mastered these amazing records that are the very original and first mastering engineers. With the white coats. But although it took a lot of skill to do it well we have a new set of things to deal with as modern digital medium mastering engineers. Such as almost limitless dynamic range. The skill now is making use of it all.