Soundsmith's turnaround time?

Give the man a break. I have called and spoken to him before. Met him at the show last year in Canada. He is friendly and would not mind giving "free advice". Right now, I have 3 cartridges with him waiting to be done. Frankly, Soundsmith has confirmed that they have received the cartridges. They gave me a #. Recently they sent an email saying the cartridges are ready to be worked on an gave me an ETA. I believe that is good communication.

When it gets done, it will get done.

What about the possibility of simply not accepting any more cartridges until the current backlog is taken care of?

Many musical instrument makers have to do this, for one example.

I had Peter retip a Shelter 901 and a Phase Tech P3-G recently. Wait time was 16 weeks, which was a few weeks more than I was initially quoted, but I didn't mind. The work is wonderful. The Phase Tech sounds better than factory and tracks *much* better. I'm enjoying it so much I haven't even mounted the Shelter yet!

Peter Ledermann is one of the good guys in the industry. He is helpful and generous with his knowledge and his re-tipping service is extremely competitively priced. Remember too that if your cart is unrepairable there is no charge made for his time spent investigating/working on it. I don't think you can get a fairer deal than that.

From my experience Soundsmith operate a first-in first out system where carts are held in line and worked on in order. With one pair of hands and eyes the time before your cart gets looked at can vary depending on what else has come in before yours.

Some of you guys need to get real - no business is going to turn work away when the economy is like it is right now. And as others have said, all the other companies that do rebuilds are no faster but are more expensive. You've just got to accept that this is highly specialized work and you can't just go out and hire temporary help to increase throughput.

I sent in mine in May 2009 and I didn’t get it back till mid-Dec 2009 (Christmas present?); after listening to it for few hours, all my frustration and discomfit has varnished.