Cost to Rewire a Tonearm?

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.

Rewiring a tonearm is not child's play but close. They are not complicated devices. It is difficult to believe so many audiophiles are uncomfortable with a task like this.