Cartridge Damaged, need advise on getting new

Andy does nice work.

Simple job to replace the cantilever, but your cartridge will never be as good as the original Dynavector. 

Really, I was advised it may actually sound even better.

There’s every chance it will be as good as it was when new, assuming the person who works on it knows exactly what he or she is doing. It most likely won’t be the same as before, but that’s a different matter altogether.

I’ve had a number of cartridges retipped or rebuilt (by Soundsmith, Benz Micro, VdH, Expert Stylus) and every one sounded just as good or better than before. The latest, an AT-OC10, was a particular success and is now about as good as anything I’ve heard after a trip to Soundsmith.

As long as you’re not swapping the boron cantilever and line contact stylus for something inferior you have nothing to worry about.

I had Soundsmith do 3 retips for me over the years. I wouldn’t expect them to be better. Maybe as good as original if your lucky. But all three i had done sounded different than original. I even did a direct comparison between a retip emt tsd15 and a brand new one. Very different sounding. I think some people send in worn cartridges and get them back sounding better because they sounded bad at the time of being worn out. I don’t feel any retip is as good as original. Unless maybe the denon 103 people seem to like to retip. No experience with this. I do recommend SoundSmith though. Their work is excellent and both the Peters are great to do business with. For $450 they will make your worthless broken cartridge into something quite decent. If you don’t like it you can probably sell it for more than that.