Cost to Rewire a Tonearm?

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. 

chakster, everyone

the tonearm is the one on the right side of photo #8 in my system shown here

https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/9511

It’s the one chakster advised me not to buy.

I dropped it off with Steve and Ray at VAS earlier today. Picked up the Cayin they biased for me. Except for the unprotected wire, they were impressed by it, especially liked the micrometer for VTA.

They showed me a nice VPI junction box to use that will fit inside the dust cover and have a mini connector input/rca out: easily remove the arm. I asked them to paint over the text, change the ugly screws to black allen head. yes, yes, of course.

https://www.vpiindustries.com/store/p254/Junction_Box.html