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Family Problems...

My last post here was about how to keep my baby away from my Magnepans, but it seems I had my eye on the wrong person in my home! I stupidly let my wife take over turntable duties for an evening while I was busy in my office only to come home to a broken cartridge. I believe she literally dropped the needle on the record and part of it broke. So now I seek the wise advice of the internets on what to do. But first more details...

It's a 6-month old Denon DL301-mk2 and I was quite happy with it prior to it breaking. I know there are re-tipping services that might be able to fix it. It looks like material at the pivot of the cantilever that fixes it in place has separated from the rest of the cartridge. Think it's worth repairing or would scrapping it be the route you'd go? Again, I was quite happy with it before and I'm not particularly interested in experimenting with similarly priced cartridges at this point. 
hapafoto
rdk777's avatar
rdk777
577 posts
 
Send it to VAS Audio.  Steve will retip for around $250 - but, best to call him for an exact quote and discuss options (upgrades).  He repairs tons of Denon's and knows what he's doing.  His turnaround time may also be better than Soundsmith. Cartridges break - they're very fragile. 

https://vasnyinc.com/repair-service/

hapafoto OP
11 posts
 
Very helpful, all! The wife felt badly that it was damaged and surprised me this evening by telling me purchased a new one. I guess I’ll still look into re-tipping the broken one to have a backup down the line. 
geof3
1,129 posts
 
Second or third the VAS recommendation. Steve reworked my cart... very reasonable. He is busy, so turn around isn’t super fast right now, but the job is done right. Get another cart and move on. My wife doesn’t really like to play with the TT, so as mentioned prior, we’ve got streaming gear to use. She likes it, she can listen to “her” music and it’s all good. She loves the vinyl sound but isn’t “into it”.
chakster's avatar
chakster
6,144 posts
 
Probably you don’t understand what is re-ripping. If only stylus tip was damaged then you need just new tip, but on aluminum cantilever stylus tip mounted with press-fit method. Re-tippers can glue a new tip, but it’s downgrade compared to press-fit. You can’t re-do a press-fit, you will have to change the whole cantilever. It’s cheaper to buy a brand new cartridge and your new cartridge can be much better! People who love to re-tip cheap cartridges are very strange, you can upgrade cheap cartridge replacing the whole cantilever/stylus, but it will cost you more than a new cartridge. If you don’t want to upgrade it, never re-tip it, it will be downgrade if it’s not a denon factory service. So basically it’s waste of money, buy new cartridge, if you love your denon so much just buy the same new cartridge.

Your denon DL301 mk2 cost only $390 new, you can find it even cheaper (new). Re-tippers charge the same just for new cantilever and new tip (if you want a good one). But you can buy a better cart for under $500 (with better tip than Denon elliptical). You can always buy a much better MM or MI for the same money (with replaceable stylus). 

Look for Garrott P77i series for example, amazing new cartridge for the money, brand with a long history related to Garrott brothers.
lewm
13,228 posts
 
I am surprised that Chakster  did not point this out, but if the stylus originally was a spherical one, then for about the cost of a new replacement you can have sound smith upgrade the cartridge with a more advanced stylus tip and possibly a sapphire cantilever for about the same cost . Or even a little less than replacement cost.. It does seem you will probably need a new cantilever and a stylus, but I don’t see in my experience where that affects cost very much. Most cartridge repair businesses is routinely replace both the cantilever and the stylus when rebuilding a cartridge. It’s your call.
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