Cost to Rewire a Tonearm?

thanks for the advice everyone.

Knowing I was taking a big risk buying from Russia, I bought a 3 year warranty from Square Trade when I bought the tonearm ($110), they confirmed they will reimburse me.
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I met both Steve and Ray Leung of VAS on Monday, what wonderful people with a love of audio and equipment. You are surrounded by a warehouse of vintage equipment, LP's, R2R tapes, and it is heart warming to see a father and son working together with such enthusiasm.

They knew my Fisher 80-AZ's by sight when I showed them the photo, Steve said: if you ever want to sell them .... He has a few matched sets of EL37's but I didn't want to be tempted, so I didn't ask the price.

They finished the bias of the Cayin yesterday, 2 days, what took so long?I'm lucky to live only 35 minutes from their shop. I'm gonna pick it up and drop off the tonearm.

They already know about the silk covered Litz wire it has. I'll let them decide what wire they want to use, I am sure it will be high quality, and selected for the specifics of the arm and to avoid a repeat of the problem. Once I pick a pro I have confidence in, I make my desires/preferences known, then let them do their job in a way they can guarantee. They have rewired a lot of arms, we might do 1 in our lifetime (I hope no more).

I saw a beautiful 12" SME arm they restored. I have an old 3009 series II in a box, I probably will have them overhaul it someday.
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my problem: insulation worn off where UNPROTECTED wires exit the base (above the deck) causing slight hum. It's the weak link, a bad design choice.

http://newartvinyl.ru/board/detali_proigryvatelja/tonarm_black_bird12_5_carbon/7-1-0-41

The new Blackbird design with integral DIN connector, and PROTECTED wires would have avoided this.

http://newartvinyl.ru/board/detali_proigryvatelja/tonarm_black_bird12_5_5pin/7-1-0-53

If local, I would have recourse with NewArtVinyl, have the base changed from my RCA Junction Box to integral DIN. I may submit my bill to them when done, ask for some compensation, see what happens.

Oh Happy Day.

The OP did not ask about the cost of the cables, some of you can easily pay absolutely crazy amount for a short piece of super thin litz wire (for internal part of the tonearm).
He asked about the cost of some pro to do the job.

As I said it depends on the tonearm, if all you need is to disassemble some tonearm parts to remove 4x25cm thin wires from sme type bayonet to DIN connector then it can be very easy. Copper Cardas or Discovery litz will not cost you more than $60 for 50cm (which is enough for two tonearms).

I don’t think this job can cost more than $100 in the real world!



P.S. If your tonearm is the one without removable headshell and without DIN connector inside then it’s even easier, but in this situation you need one phono cable for internal and external parts of the tonearm in this configuration.

Maybe in Russia.

@lewm I never paid anything for rewire in Russia, we did it with my friends (with Technics and Lustre tonearms) many times, it was super easy, took no more than 1 hour.

I paid $150 to a technician in Asia for an EPA-100 rewire.

I always provided my own wires purchased separately.

Elliott does not have some esoteric tonearms, he’s got pretty basic vintage stuff, any technician who specializes in Technics service (all those DJ decks) can do that for cheap, there is nothing special.

It’s absolutely crazy when someone charges $1500 for rewire including cable, but for audiophiles there are plenty of people who are happy to change 10 times more than any normal tech.

It would be better to name a tonearm you want to rewire, Elliott ?

If we are talking $1500, I completely agree with you, Chak.  On the other hand, I would want an experienced pro to do the job for me, if I were to farm it out to someone else. (I can do it myself, too.)  So a really qualified tech here in the US might charge $100 per hour or a bit more, with the wire costing extra.  I think to do the job carefully, assuming a tonearm of average difficulty, might require 2 hours, but of course that is very dependent upon the construction of the tonearm, and if the tech has done dozens of that particular tonearm, then the work would go much faster. 1500 bucks is very crazy, indeed.