Low Hours Phono Cartridges?

I am completely in line with Ekobesky's comments. Over the alst 4 years, I have sold a Kontra A with about 100 hours, a Benz Ace with about 50 hours and ZYX R50 with about 20-30. In each case, I really wanted to try for example a well known combination that was recommended to me (Ace on VPI Scout) or just know the flavor of the ZYX cartridge line.

I would trust a person for a used cartridge as well if the three things are fulfilled:

(a) positive feedback, (b) length of time on A'gon and (c) their experience with analog

Also take a look at the forums here and on Asylum - several people are active in both places and I would trust most of the active members more than someone how just comes here to the classifieds section to turn over goods.

Low Hours = The amount of time after you buy a cartridge that you see someone post a thread that claims their cartridge is better than yours, and then you believe them. Usually about 2 weeks ;-)

So it appears that many of you buy & sell cartridges to hear them. This means that buying & selling components here has basically replaced auditioning at the local dealer.

Has anyone ever had a shop set up a specific cartridge in a table for you to audition? Not one shop ever did that for me(I've been buying audio since 1969....AR table). And I've asked!

I managed an audio shop in LA in the 80's. I regularly set up tables & cartridges for auditions, but was never asked for a specific combination. However, I often mounted various cartridges just to hear them myself.

One interesting thing I found was that various examples of the same cartridge can sound completely different. I auditioned 3 Audioquest 404's, & they all were unique. One sounded particularly better than the others, so I bought it!

I wonder if some of these high end cartridges that you audition are lemons, & so they get passed around until they find an owner who is happy with it!

As far as feedback, I have fb from just 2 purchases here. The last 4 sellers didn't post fb. However, I have over 10000 fb on ebay, where I make my living selling musical equipment. So I look new here, but I have 9 years of selling experience on the internet! Am I trustworthy??

Regarding measuring hours on a cartridge, I learned a trick here on Audiogon some years back: I have "click" counters for each of my (currently) four cartriges. After each side of a record, I religiously click the counter. If I ever decide to sell a cartrdige, I can honestly state how many sides the cartridge has played, and leave it to the purchaser to do the math.