Have There Ever Been Fake Koetsu?

@mulveling Thank you - you've given be a lot to think about / explore. 

FWIW, the stone bodied Koetsus work well with the Kuzma Airline- it doesn’t have high vertical mass, but the horizontal mass is considerable (this, notwithstanding Franc’s claim that the air bearing is frictionless and makes that irrelevant for most purposes). I have a Jade and Tiger Eye, both new from factory. The Jade is very good; there is some criticism that it makes everything some the same- i.e., a coloration. The Tiger Eye, which took time to break in, has more high freq information, and I’ve been running that for a while.

These are special cartridges- normally a high mass arm of the old type is required. But the combo of air bearing linear tracker + Koetsu works magic in my system; it isn’t just midrange purity-- I’ve had Van den Hul, Lyras top offerings and Airtights- none had the bass dimension and tone of the Koetsu along with that magical midrange.

I know the initial post was about Koetsu forgeries, but the discussion went sideways into 3rd party retipping.

I had been using Van den Hul for a couple decades. With COVID19, I decided I didn’t want to chance sending the cartridge across the pond and so I tried someone local, Steve Leung of VAS. I plan on writing a review of moderate length of the work he has done for me on my Rosewood Signature and Onyx, after my new room is complete (taking forever: I’m slowed down from bypass heart surgery) and I have had time to fully break in the Onyx, but for now suffice to say that Ana Mighty and Expert - to say nothing of insanely expensive Koetsu itself - are not the only options. Steve says that he refurbishes to Koetsu specs.

I’ll never sell these cartridges so I am not worried about resale, I’m just concerned about performance.

Keep us posted - my retip / reconstruction time is coming.

Any thoughts on this ?: https://www.ebay.com/itm/394914443029