Can Sound-Smith tip sound as good as original?


I need to repair a damaged cantilever on a Clearaudio Virtuoso Wood cartridge. Will the aluminum alloy/nude elliptical option from Sound-Smith match the quality of the original cantilever and stylus?

Thanks
jwglista
Jonathan Carr, while you state factually incorrect, in my issue what I posted is factually correct as I experienced. Perhaps a heart to heart with your dealers and/or distributors is warranted. I could not take the Lyra back to original dealer as the shop closed years ago. You have a splendid product and have recommended the Lyra line to many folks. My most recent recommendation was the Dorian to a dear friend of mine and he is most happy with it.

Dynavector is a whole other story, which doesn't warrant space here. But suffice to say I will never own another Dynavector product of any kind and haven't in some 10 plus years.

I am deep into vinyl playback average about 30 hours per week. So come late next year the Lyra may need service again.

For the 50 years I have been in this hobby business,each and everyone of my customers are treated like gold, because that is just what they are - GOLD. Over the course of the years I have taken gear in that I never sold and took care of that customer. Reason is simple, he/she came to me with a problem. I solved that problem, because I wanted that new customer. I certainly did not want them shopping around, when the situation was in my domain to solve. While I have taken loses over the years, I have gained far more new customers that have stayed with me and continue to do so.

At 65 now I am no doubt considered a dinosaur by todays current business models. However today we are seeing a vast amount of business that are closing there doors and the root problem is customer service.

I do wish Lyra continued success, but on my end it is time for me to re-evalaute. Thus far Benz Micro has my vote when it comes to customer service.
I got so annoyed with the problem of stylus replacement on MC cartridges that I went back to the good old reliable Shure V15. It was always..."we can't fix your cartridge but we will give you a discount on the new model, which happens to cost a lot more". BS I say!
I had a cart retipped by Soundsmith, and it was fantastic. I imagined it was better than the original, since I had the Optimized Contour stylus put on, which was a different profile than the original stylus.

But, I never got to hear my cart factory fresh on my Raven One. By the time I got the table, the cart was well into it's life. So it;s not a truly fair comparison.

The choice of stylus profile when retipping it important. The Standard vs.Optimized contour really makes a difference, as it a dance between information retrieval vs. groove (damage) noise. I know this first hand since I have the Strain Gauge with both types of styli and can change styli within a few seconds.

Records in good shape are great with the Optimized contour, while a number of used LP's I own (that were not played on good carts) fair better with the Standard Contour.

The other issue is one of time frame. I believe Soundsmith does retips as a labor of love, (all personally done by Peter) and hence there is a fairly long wait time. And the more people that find out about this amazing service, I suspect the longer the times will be. So clearly a person would have to have a spare cart while they wait for the retip.

I didn't have a spare and picked up one of their inexpensive SMMC-3's while waiting for my cart to return. I was pretty shocked how good a $300 cart sounded, but then again it was in a Raven One/Phantom, so I imagine anything would sound good on that.