Another vote for Kilian Bakker in the Netherlands. He repaired several of my cartridges - even some obscure ones - and his knowledge and expertise are second to none. He did FR-7f, Audiocraft AC-03 Mono, Shelter 701 and Harmony and Ortofon MC Rohmann. But he doesn’t do everything. At some point one channel of my Krell KC-200 gave up, caused by a broken coil wire. He wouldn’t repair it as this would fundamentally alter the sound of Takeda’s original design. This is a judgment call that I can respect and agree with.
However I didn’t want to give up on this cartridge, which had already been retipped by a previous owner using a non original boron cantilever. Retaining the ’original’ sound was not my objective anyway as I have several other Takeda / Miyabi cartridges still in original condition. So I decided to sent the cartridge to Dominic Harper of northwest analogue in the UK; https://northwestanalogue.com/ He was able to rewire the coils using 6N copper wire of similar gauge while keeping the original rubber suspension intact (supposedly Takeda’s ’secret sauce’) and fitted a Gyger FG tip on the existing boron cantilever. While the final result is what is often referred to as a "Frankenstein", the sound is just amazing. Obviously different from the Miyabi sound, but very convincing in its own right. Can’t give enough praise for the work he has done.
