Fidelity Research FR-7 Repair

Our chakster believes in manufacturer authority and intentions despite our long disputes about tonearm geometry. In addition he distrust retippers and never retipped any of his carts. So his advice is ’’based’’ on his believes.

Been using at least 4 re-tipped and re-cantilevered cartridges and all of them were worst than the originals, so never again (and this is one of the reason i am against the retip/refurbishing), for me it’s obvious that no one can make better than the original, especially if the original manufacturer is a BIG company and cartridge design is a clever design. Re-tip is a compromise only, people trying to pay less and they will get what they are paying for. Using a third party parts instead of the original is worst idea in my opinion and some cartridge designers already posted about it on this forum many times. I have no idea why people retip cartridges or refurbish them if better cartridges available even for the price of the retip (many great cartridges available at $500-700).

The difference between Stevenson and Beearwald is about 1mm.
Aka effective length Stevenson 245 mm, Bearwald 246mm.

You are talking about Pivot to Spindle distance, but how can you twist a cartridge designed for Stevenson to align it by cantilever position, there are 3 steps in any protractor and the problem is not that stylus can reach those points, the problem is that a cartridge body must be turned to the left or to the right in the headshell because the cantilever must be in line with lines printed on protractor, your headshell intergated cartridge will be off the alignment and changing PS will not help you, because FR7 does not move to the left or to the right in the headshell at all. Some people just don’t understand it! They want to create more problems for FR7 series.

With Axel my retipper for years I become friends. Alas he was/is not able to do the work because he lost comand of his left hand. But he
was nearly 70 and with 50 years of experience.

Axel refurbished cartridges are worst than the originals and i was able to make sure about it, compared them in my system. He’s been using Nagaoka cartrilevers transplanted from Nagaoka cartridges to Technics MM by gluing them using as you said joint pipe. Those cartridges are worst than the original, because the boron cantilever is rod, not pipe (like the OG) and stylus is glued. The last cartridge he touched stop working after 1 year (one channel malfunction). This is waste of time and money. It will never be better than the original (if the original design is a good one). Invest in original cartridges, perfectly working samples, NOS units and you will be fine. Don’t like them - buy another (better cartridges). Any good cartridge is a very delicate devise and it’s better not touch it. We see many retipped and refurbished cartridges for same, this is the best place for them. Only manufacturer can guarantee that a cartridge will be the same as new after their service, but even manufacturers prefer to give us a brand new cartridge instead of the broken one. 

Dear chakster, Our ''dispute'' become very difficult if one confuse
spindle to pivor distance with effective lenght and persist in
believe that manufacturer ''know better''. As Raul and Kessler&
Pisha have shown neither of all 22 tonearms are without errors.
Primary by ofsfset angle and overhang. Either they considered
tonearm geometry as not important or were not familar with them.
You also suggest that retippers use different cantilever/styli
combo's than manufacturer. But both get those from the same
supplier. If you assume some special art needed to glue an
new  cantilever in the  joint pipe  you probably have never looked
at those parts in an MC cart. Each retipper prefer to do  the
whole cantielver/stylus instead of stylus only retip. No wonder
by the price difference ;$  200 versus $500. Axel refused even
to me to do stylus only retip. He got so much work that he was
able to chose. I then moved to Expert stylus in UK who
still do stylus only retip for 200 euro. They also produce styli
which are identical qua dimensions with Van den Hul. They
provide Deccas with those styli. 
. 

The argument that a re-tipper in 2020 can get what manufacturer was able to get in 1986 is false. They need a time machine to do so.

They can’t get 90% of those cantilevers from the 70s/80’s, as i said earlier some of them are simply no longer available at all and no longer in production anywhere in this world (beryllium, boron pipe, ceramic).

Looking at FR-7fz aluminum cantilever or at Miyabi aluminum cantilever i can say for sure that it is not an aluminum cantilever that SoundSmith can get today, they are all different in shape, mass length, special treatment.

This is the reason why anyone can detect a fake cantilever on any cartridge if a person remember the original one. Those new cantilevers are different and no one need a microscope to recognize that they are different.

SoundSmith Ruby cantilever/stylus combo does not even looks like an old Ruby cantilevers i own on many original cartridges like Grace F14 and LEVEL II.

How can anyone say that re-tippers can get the same? They can’t get the same without time traveling back to the 80’s.

So when a person who own some vintage MC from the 70’s pretending to get the same Boron cantilever it’s an illusion, he can’t get the same cantilever, because nearly all Boron cantilevers from the 70s/80s were Boron PIPE and now 100% Boron cantilevers are Boron ROD. Huge difference in mass rigidity etc. 

Ruby and Sapphire also way different today, i have compared many new and old cantilevers. Too much glue on new ones and very little on the old ones. People reported that new diamonds fell off in a few years (especially if someone will try a liquid stylus cleaner). Even the cheapest Aluminum is different too.

Re-tippers can offer what they can (it’s their business), but it is way different from the original design. Some of the re-tippers job looks awful under microscope, some are accurate. You never know. Some of the retippers will never tell you their own opinion, you asked for retip you will get it, that’s it. If you don’t like the sound it’s your problem, the job is done.

Of course it is my personal opinion and someone may not agree with me, but please don’t tell everyone that re-tippers getting cantilevers from the same bin as the manufacturers, we're talking about vintage and new cartridges here, don’t forget the 40 years gap in time between the production of FR cartridges and new production of Namiki and Ogura cantilevers for modern retippers and manufacturers.

It’s funny, buy your favorite Mr Andreoli (interview is here) does not use any of the cantilevers from those Japanese manufacturers like Namiki and Ogura for some reason. He design and make his own LIKE THIS (even for his reference MM cartridges). Another interview with him.

As you know those Ikeda (FR) and Takeda (Miyabi) hardened aluminum cantilevers are not mass market product, i’ve seen a dozen of aluminum cantilevers on many cartridges and they have nothing to do with those special aluminum cantilevers coming from state-of-the-art designers, completely different, what is the same is the word "aluminum", nothing else.

This is all like a Ford parts on Porsche car, or vise versa (this is re-tip and re-cantilever of the best vintage cartridges with third party parts available today).

Dear chaksrer, you are again back to parts. Lets talk about them.
The coils are the most difficult to repair. Nobody wants to mess
with those. Then there are dampers. No retipper has the ''original''
but, say, 3 unknown kinds meant for different compliance. The
most easy job is to supstitute cantilever/stylus combo. Stylus 
only retip is much more difficult to do then cantilevr/stylus combo.
But the most  people are arguing about this part. So the ''most
people'' have no idea what they are talking about. Think about
LP 12. What are original and what improved parts? Who can
''compose'' one LP 12 from ''orignal parts''  or, to put this otherwise,
what are originl parts by an  LP 12? 

Soundsmith said that the aluminum they use is not the same as the aluminum that the original cantilever was made from so a choice based on that was irrelevant (my words). The strongest option is boron so I went with their recommendation on that. Should I be asking about cantilever length?