How old is your cartridge?

@audite84

You can’t ship anything to VdH if you don’t know him personally, you can only ask his official distributor in your country if it’s acceptable. The price is insane and not worth it with your 205c mk3 cartridge. I seriously doubt the information about VdH personal retip/rebuild is valid today. Many people who retipped before reported that most likely he’s no longer retip/rebuild anything personally, except for a very special occasion.

I think you should try JICO SAS first, they got replacement stylus designed for your cartridge, the benefit is S.A.S. profile (Super Analogue Stylus). My original mk4 was better than S.A.S., but the situation with mk3 is different, I preferred the sound of S.A.S. over original mk3 stylus.

The benefit of the original elliptical is extremely low mass with hollow pipe boron cantilever.

Fist S.A.S. combo was Boron Rod + S.A.S. profile, now it’s Sapphire or Ruby cantilever with the same profile. Try it if you can find it!

You said the damper is OK, but how do you know? I bought at least 3 samples of mk3 and 4 samples of mk4. The damper was weak on all of them, except for Axel’s re-build samples!

I’m waiting for my NOS p-mount version of 205p mk4 to check if I’m lucky or not, gonna get it in a month or so. My last try with Technics.

In my opinion Audio-Technica AT-ML180 OCC is superior cartridge to all those Technics 100 and 205 series. Search on audiogon if you want to know why.

Dear @audite84 : When you be ready to the re-tip put in contact with me and I will give you the information to contact directly with and I have to tell you that dealing with is not expensive.

What makes to talk persons as the one here against the Technics superior quality level performance just speak because their very low knowledge levels.

I remember that when I had to send my EPC100C MK4 to been fixed by VdH another gentleman here had the same problem ( both of us bougth the cartridges from the same seller in NOS condition and were the stand alone version not the one with integrated headshell. ) and I gave him the information about.

Things were that this gentleman just bougth a Lyra Atlas LOMC cartridge and when the Technics came back to him he posted here that performed even better than his Atlas.

I repeat those Technics models are way superior to the ATs, Stantons or even almost all vintage MM/MI cartridges but the AKG P100LE and the ADC 26/27.

There are several vintage MM/MI cartridges where you need and keep your " eyes " on it as: Astatic MF-2500, Empire 4000/D3, Grado The AmberTribute, Sonus Dimension5, Nagaoka MP50 Super, Nagatron 9600, Shure Ultra 500, Acutex 320 III STR,  Azden YM-P50VL, Micro Acoustic MA630, Grado G-1+.

You can be sure that any one of them beats AT/Stanton and the like. Yes you need patience to find out any of them. Keep in touch.

In the other side today MM/MI/LOMC cartridges are excellent performers and with the advantage of manufacturer warranty.

R.

Recently had my Benz L2 (not sure of age but it's older) rebuilt by Steve at VAS.  I think he can pretty much rebuild anything that's wrong with one from replacing a worn stylus to a complete rebuild.  Did a great job too. 
vasnyinc.com

@chakster I think the suspension is fine because the cartridge sounds very good. That's my only way of telling. But it is old, so it is possible that the suspension is suboptimal. And thank you for your contribution to the discussion. 

@rauliruegas Thank you. I'm just wondering, is it a good idea to have it retipped with a finer profile? 

I think the suspension is fine because the cartridge sounds very good.

When suspension is softened a cartridge body will be too close to the record surface with recommended tracking force. But the stylus tip on mk3 is very tall, so even if the damper is almost dead there will be some tiny gap anyway. However, this situation is not normal, but it’s a compromise. We discussed Technics low riders with Nadric million times on this forum :) It’s very hard to find a Technics cartridge without softened rubber damper, unfortunately it’s a problem of this brand (I tried so many times).