Dynavector Karat 17D3: retip for $500 or get something new?

@prophos - move to another cartridge. If your speakers are not bass efficient, the 17D3 is not for you. I owned one a number of years ago, and while it is brilliant for rock, I felt the bottom end did not have the authority, and I felt it to be thin and bright. 

If you can find an Audio Technica ART9 on the market, grab it. It has since been discontinued and replaced with the ART9XI, which you should consider if you can’t find the ART-9. While I now have a $9000 Air Tight PC-1s, I still say the ART9 is still hands down the best cartridge for the money and bests many cartridges costing 3-4x its price. Do a search on this forum and you will see the massive following on it. It is a very musical, organic, and revealing cartridge. It does almost everything right.

I’m not trying to pick a fight here but the comment above that the cartridge is bright or bass light is exactly what I would expect to hear if the VTA was off. I also thought it was bass light until I dialed it in. Now it is deep, thunderous, tuneful, controlled and superb. I can easily imagine someone comparing this cartridge to a less expensive one that is less sensitive to VTA and thinking that the cheaper cartridge has more bass. Yeah, if it’s set up wrong that would make a lot of sense.
Consider that the replacement cartridge in the line lists for somewhere in the neighborhood of $2000.
But, like I said,  there are a lot of good cartridges out there. People rave about the Denon DL103, and it's much less expensive. 

Dynavector 17D2 mkII is excellent cartridge, today I took a picture of my spare sample, still NOS in the box. 

This is my 4th Dynavector cartridge, and the 1st Dynavector with unique magnetic flux damping and softened magnetism (patent) along with powerful Neodymium magnet that combine to eliminate any hardness or irritating edginess that commonly occurs in many moving coil cartridges. This has also enabled to increase the output of 0.26mV. It has 1.7mm length Diamond cantilever which is much smaller than any conventional cantilever. Karat 17D2 mkII showed a ruler flat response from 100 Hz to 30KHz (under ± 0.5 dB) as you can see on printed individual test for this particular sample. The Micro Ridge of 0.06 square mm nude diamond stylus is carefully mounted in the cantilever. The armature of 0.9mm square and 0.4mm thick is much smaller than normal, upon which are wounded 70 turns per channel of 11 micron fine wire. Dynavector is highly regarded as a manufacturer of the finest high-performance moving coil phono cartridges since 1975. My first Dynavector was a high output DV-30A from the 70’s, released in Japan 1 year before the Karat series. Then I fell in love with Karat 23RS (Ruby) and Karat 17DS Super (Diamond), the sound quality was addictive. At the moment the Karat 17d2 mkII (Diamond) is the highest model in my vault.

I would NEVER let anyone to re-tip it, except for the Dynavector in Japan! 

The question in my mind is whether indeed anyone other than Dynavector can re-tip a 17D3 with its unique 17mm diamond cantilever and stylus.  Because I doubt that anyone but DV can do that, it really is a choice of whether you want to have a "new" cartridge that is a chimera of the 17D3 body with a very different cantilever and stylus or a whiff of the original SQ that you apparently grew to love.  I advise you to send it back to DV.
(Chak, Those B&K frequency response graphs that used to be routinely included in the box with any fine cartridge almost always showed a "ruler flat response".  I've got the one that came with my own 17D3.)

What is clearly stated in the manual:

Either cantilever or stylus of Karat is not replaceable. In the case of the worn stylus, your cartridge is replaced to the new cartridge with special rate charge of the retail price. When the cantilever is broken by any reason, your cartridge is also replaced to the new one with same price from above special rate. The other electrical and mechanical defects are guaranteed except the user’s mishandling or abuse.

P.S. You have to contact Dynavector (or Dynavector Dealer).