Koetsu Restoration


I just finished a weekend listening to a Koetsu Black I had restored by Soundsmith and thought I should share this with other members. I had it restored with Soundsmith's Ruby Cantilever and Optimized Contour. Their top of the line restoration. I have to confessed I never expected the out of the box performance I heard on this cartridge. I installed it on a second system and my wife said it sounded better than my main system which is $10K more expensive. The level of expression and musicality on this restored cartridge was beyond my expectations. Enough said! Before you discard your old cartridge you may want to consider a restoration. I did and I am really happy with the results. This is the first time I have had a cartridge restored and I am already considering the restoration of two other classic cartridges I have.
dserran
Threaders : Peter of Soundsmith is a rare genius in the field of cartridge rebuild. Many of us have been content until listening to his work. In my world of audio-heads here and across the pond , Peter is the most respected cartridge builder. Please consider these comments before thrashing $$$$ rather than a re-build. Cheers !
The suspension finally collapsed on my old Koetsu Rodewood Signature. Soundsmith did a suspension reconstruction plus the ruby cantilever and optimized contour diamond. It's hard to compare by memory, but there's no doubt that the rebuild has a higher resolution than the original. I'm very pleased.
20 years? Do these cartridges really last that long? I was thinking about buying a Black and even if it last's half that long that would be awesome..

My pre-amp is a Mcintosh C220 and it has about 64 db of gain, would this be enough for the Black? and if so what would kind of step up would be a good idea?

thanks

Mark
For what it's worth, I ended up buying a new Koetsu Black instead of having my 20 year old one rebuilt. I liked the old one reasonably well, but I have to admit, there was no real comparison. I think that those that postulated that the innards of the old one would have dried out (or whatever) and become less responsive were correct. (This wasn't a stylus issue...it just didn't have that many hours on it--1000, maybe 1500.) The new one seems wonderful, for my taste.

Markc2, the Koetsu is very low output. I didn't have a pre-pre in my pre-amp, so got a EAR 834P, which seems to be a really fine match for the Koetsu. Very recently, I got a Rhea, which I frankly don't like as much as the EAR so far, but it's not yet broken in yet, and everyone tells me to just give it time. I know that Koetsu used to make a transformer/step-up (because I still have mine). Don't know how good they are, but one guy told me to hang onto it...I guess they're kind of rare.
Mark, You wrote, "My pre-amp is a Mcintosh C220 and it has about 64 db of gain, would this be enough for the Black? and if so what would kind of step up would be a good idea?"

There is an internal contradiction in your question. If the gain of the C220 is sufficient, then you won't need any SUT at all. That's the ideal situation. If you're C220 really has 64db of phono gain, I would venture to guess that it WILL be sufficient for the Koetsu Black. I know nothing about the C220, but ideally you may want also to be able to reduce the phono load resistance from the standard 47K ohms to something like 100R to 200R for optimal performance, but it's a matter of personal judgement; the Koetsu will certainly "work" into a 47K load but may sound a tad bright.