Soundsmith's turnaround time?

Cartridge rebuilding is such a popular line of work that tech school graduates are turned away in the thousands by companies like Soundsmith, Benz, VdH and so many others. Within these labs, lucky workers develop in mere days the skills required to perfectly install and align itty bitty fragile cantilevers in the superstrong magnetic fields of very expensive cartridges while wearing bearskin mittens. These two factors explain why nobody needs to wait for a cartridge rebuild.

Tasteless joking aside, the wait time was very long but Soundsmith came through for me. They did a Cardas Heart Reference and a Koetsu Rosewood Sig. I highly recommend them. If anyone wants to try Benz, the wait time was exactly the same for the cart I sent there.

One person recently sold a Soundsmith cartridge - he referred to the time spent at Soundsmith as a "glacial epoch".

Awesome!

Not sure about the hang up, however truth is I call the New York number, listen to a very long winded "Welcome message" on a machine, Finally it allows you to hit "9" I believe is the #, and it connects me to live customer service everytime.

No problem with communications, I sent my Cartridge into them Jan. 21st or 22nd, came back on about March 15th to 20th. So about 6 weeks like they say. Also I paid 19 bucks extra to make sure they expedited it back with 2 Day fed ex shipping.

No issues beyond that, perfect service, good enough communication, Zero issues with the quality of work and of course the sound of this sucker is super sweet!

My only suggestion is that its VERY possible the more exotic the cart. or simply the more a "Pain in the Ass" it might take longer to dissassemble and get correct, so unfortunately you get pushed back on the basic economics of it when he has 10 bread and butter denon carts sitting there all getting the same "Flat Fee cost" that can get done in 2 days vs. 2 weeks of work or special parts, adhesive or whatever.

I can't even tell how some of these carts could easily come apart to be cleaned, aligned, and signal tested, which from my understanding they go deep finishing and testing these with even perfect channel matching balance. Probably lots of microscopes involved I don't know!

Just a guess I don't know but there has to be some strange reason with the inconsistencys, because they take no payments up front and probably for good reason, they can't evaluate until they really get it in the shop I assume.

Plus if 50 people send these in all at one time I can imagine vs. if they get only 15 in one month instead? I have to be honest we have no clue how many go, there could literally be a back room with 1000 little boxes all virtually the same sitting at one time of virtually 2% to 20% of the audiophile population in the world sending their cart. to these guys, and they simply get lost in the shuffle.
Good Luck

I just had my Shelter 501 II rebuilt at the $250.00 level and am a completely satisfied customer. When I initiated the work, I was given an estimate of how long it would take and they completed the work within the estimated timeframe. My suggestion is to be patient and not bug them until they have exceeeded the original time estimate.

You have absolutely nothing to gain by rushing a master craftsman and I can only imagine what his reaction would be if someone was pestering him as busy as he is.

Jack

I sent a B&O 8000 table in to be refurbished in November 2009. Original estimate was 6 - 8 weeks. Then I was notified very shortly thereafter it would be closer to 8 - 12 weeks. That was all fine with me. We're pushing on close to 20 weeks now and I haven't heard or seen nothing from Soundsmith. I never called, emailed, or otherwise inquired because I know Peter is busy, but still one has to wonder if they are that busy why do they continually take on more work than they can handle.

It's to the point where I have really lost all interest in the project and ordered a new table altogether which will most likely get here before the B&O. While I'm glad to hear that some have had better experiences, it appears that may be the exception rather than the rule.