Cartridge life really only 3 years??

HI Viridian,
I think you are being overly conservative where there is no practical reason to be so. I have never seen a stylus show wear under the microscope at 800 hours. However, in this game, being conservative is better than pushing the stylus past the point where it is causing record damage. So, I will just say that you are wasting some of the useful life of your stylus. If that's OK with you then it's OK with me. It's a bit more of an issue when we include very expensive moving coil cartridges in the discussion. For example, I would not want waste a single hour of life of my $3500 Clearaudio Discovery cartridge.

BTW, my hours count (1000 hours) is strictly based on experience with my own styli. They are the only ones I can keep close track of use. While in my repair shop, where I examined thousands of styli under the microscope, I had no way of knowing their hour count. But based upon the 1000 hour standard, the vast majority of the styli I saw in my shop were worn far past the point of prudent replacement and had many more than 1000 hours on them. I always pointed this out to my customers but left the replacement decision to them. I know their styli were causing audible distortion and damaging their records. But as is said, you can lead a horse to water but you ..........!

Sparky

I have never counted the total number of sides played with any cartridge I've owned. Does anyone count or do we all just average? How expensive is a proper scope? Audiofeil, how many times have you retipped your cart?

Not really on the subject here but one of the reasons I bought the Ortofon 2M Black was because it can be easily retipped at home. You can also choose between a Shibata or Nude Fine Line stylus as well.

This is scaring the heck out of me. Now I have about $6000 invested in analog and I am contemplating selling it all because the cartridge I have chose as my ultimate reference can only be traded in for new with a 20% credit. That only provides about $1.80 per hour return in investment. This is my major concern in staying with analog as a reference source and seems like a bad investment because of the cartridge wear.

About 8 years ago I called Grado and asked them (maybe it was "He") if I should replace my 25 year old Signature 8, wondering if it had "worn out" or gone flat. The response was no, the coils and magnets do not wear out or go flat. The stylus of course, is another thing. He even offered to check the cartridge out if I mailed it in. I took him up on his offer after which he told me it still sounded beautiful and that I should hold on to it. At some point after that I purchased a Grado Gold reasoning that after 25 years of improvements, a Grado Gold (top of the Prestige series) should sound better than an old Signature. I was wrong. I much preferred the Signature over the Gold. The Signature is still in use today.
That being said, this year I purchased 2 new cartridges, a Grado Reference Sonata1 and a Grado Statement Sonata1 and couldn't believe the refinement I heard compared to the Signature. I guess there's a reason they keep coming out with newer models.
Based on my experience, I don't think cartridges need to be replaced every 3 years because the coils and magnets deteriorate. Stylus use and suspension degradation are another issue entirely.