I tip only for exceptional service.
Teach me about cartridge 'retipping'
Thought I would throw this out there for comment by long time vinyl aficionados...
We all have cartridges we love, some are pricey treasures... but they wear out eventually even with much care and diligence in use.
There are still some good folks with excellent reputations doing retip services of various makes - Peter at SS, Andy Kim in WA, Steve Leung in NJ etc etc... not to mention some of the manufacturers of course, who still do them. It would seem to me these old craftsmen may or may not be passing along these valuable skills to younger apprentices.
I have bought a couple Grace F9 retips from Peter Ledermann - they work wonderfully. No longer having a fresh factory F9L I will never know whether they sound different. But they sound great.
Curious to hear comments about how these retips are done, and whether they can reliably reproduce the original sound signature of the cartridge. I wonder, for instance, about how the cantilever is removed and reinstalled, relative to the suspension of the original cartridge, etc etc. Is the suspension replaced? What is a suspension comprised of, for example, in a typical higher end MC cart like a Dynavector a Lyra a VDH...
Of course, as time passes, the original cartridges age and I can imagine suspensions in them eventually get compromised as well...
We all have cartridges we love, some are pricey treasures... but they wear out eventually even with much care and diligence in use.
There are still some good folks with excellent reputations doing retip services of various makes - Peter at SS, Andy Kim in WA, Steve Leung in NJ etc etc... not to mention some of the manufacturers of course, who still do them. It would seem to me these old craftsmen may or may not be passing along these valuable skills to younger apprentices.
I have bought a couple Grace F9 retips from Peter Ledermann - they work wonderfully. No longer having a fresh factory F9L I will never know whether they sound different. But they sound great.
Curious to hear comments about how these retips are done, and whether they can reliably reproduce the original sound signature of the cartridge. I wonder, for instance, about how the cantilever is removed and reinstalled, relative to the suspension of the original cartridge, etc etc. Is the suspension replaced? What is a suspension comprised of, for example, in a typical higher end MC cart like a Dynavector a Lyra a VDH...
Of course, as time passes, the original cartridges age and I can imagine suspensions in them eventually get compromised as well...
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- 61 posts total
Dug up this old thread when a friend recently was trying to get me to buy a Glanz MFG610LX https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/glanz-mfg-610lx In it, I stumbled across this entry by Chakster. I couldn’t believe it. I still wonder if I am reading this incorrectly. I’m new here. “The Azzurra Esoter comes with spherical/conical stulus and that’s why it is not expensive, but the MF generator is the same on all Glanz models, it’s is probably equal to Astatic MF-300 or MF-400. But Azurra is unknown and that’s why it’s cheaper than Astatic or Glanz. I got one as a present from Nandric last year, i have tested it and i was impressed, mainly because it’s easy to re-cantilever and te-rip them in Germany by Axel to upgrade this cartridge to another level! Axel can easity repair suspension as well (just for about 60 euro, i did it once with my NOS Glanz 71L).” Seems like at one point, you were all for retipping rare and different cartridges, @chakster. In this thread you are gushing about it. What changed your mind? |
Raul, Even the very top models today still use the same diamonds from the same big three manufacturers. I have replaced the worn Gyger S on many Jan Allaerts cartridges. If you want Jan to do it, be prepared to wait a few years in line. This is what I am told. I hear also that Lukaschek is not repairing/retipping Benz anymore, either. Not a big deal as Benz uses Namiki Micro Ridge and Gyger S and FG2. Dynavector DRT XV-1S uses an off the shelf Ogura PF 8/30 micron 0.08 x 0.14 Vital that Ogura sells to me, too. I can also upgrade. People who live near me have the ability to meet me in person and hand the cartridge off to me personally. As to whether a cartridge will sound different or not, I can’t honestly comment. I can tell you that a cartridge with a worn diamond sounds much worse than a cartridge with a brand new diamond. But I don’t get the benefit of hearing the cartridge I am repairing when it was brand new, so how should I know? I read this comment all the time on forums but not one customer has ever said, “Great work! But it sounds different than it did before and I wish I bought a new one instead.” That has happened exactly zero times. Quite the opposite. People are very very happy to have their cartridge back. |
- 61 posts total