KISEKI PURPLE NS your reviews....

Dear Nandric, that is a shocking figure. My information came from Daniele Montebovi of cartridgelab in Rome, Italy. He did some excellent work for me on an old Dynavector Ultimo DV-30C and we developped an interesting email correspondence about exotic cartridges and diamond cantilevers, including the 'one piece' variety used in the XL-88D. That is now unobtainium, but he said he could restore it (as well as the regular XL-88 and other suitable cartridges) with the Namiki diamond cantilever for €1250. So my memory was a bit optimistic, but that's still a long way from $2500. If your quote is now the going price I will also need to reconsider.

There's an important difference between 'not skimping' and 'getting ripped off'. You have to draw the line somewhere...

I feel the same about re-tipping and refurbishing, even after cartridge designers like J.Carr explained why it's a bad idea, some people still think that re-tippers in their garage are smarter than cartridge designers. We're in minority on this forum, the majority of people are happy about re-tipping with completely different diamonds/cantilevers. They are happy to pay extra money to convert clever design to some frankenstein, because re-tipper said it will be even better. One of the reason, in my opinion, is that only a few people can actually compare original sample to refurbished sample, in this case they must have both cartridges on hands, but after 5 month they can't even remember the sound of their ex original cartridge. And re-tipper will say that it must be better after burn-in (100 hrs). To my surprise many people are happy to deal with less known and less qualified re-tippers they are often advertise on this forum after the job is done. I think some audiophiles does not have enough cartridges, they want to stick to one or two and happy to re-tip them many times (instead of finding something new/better).  

Chakster
Have to agree with you here, as aural memory is very fickle and you certainly cannot remember exactly how that cart you sent for a retip sounded at its best, an idea sure but not exact.

All one has to do is look at the number of carts you see listed that say" just retipped, very few hours".
Says it all really.

Now I did use the services of VAS to REPAIR my Koetsu simply because it had gone open on one channel, this does not alter its character but was well worth $400 to have it back to 2 channel performance instead of left channel only.... lol.
This is a totally different type of repair work.

@uberwaltz Yes, coils repair can be very difficult, i remember peter Ledermann mentioned this problem in his interview. It's about coil re-winding in the worst scenario.But in your situation it could be just soldering together a broken wire?   

I honestly do not know what he did exactly to repair, all I know is it worked and it plays perfectly.

Now a friend has just acquired a Kiseki Purpleheart as an ex demo with 100 hours on it so hopefully will get to hear it very soon.

Well one can attribute all kinds of characters to the persons involved
or to the parts of the the cartridge involved. Regarding the last
mentioned kinds one need to realize that cantilevers/styli combos
are made by supplier to both; the cart producers as well repair
services. They all need to glue this part in the (aluminum) joint 
pipe on which also the coils are fastened. So if there are differences
in the ''art'' of the gluing the cantilevers in the joint pipe then one
should explain the '' árt differences'' and not declare other members
for stupid. This is to easy way out.