Soundsmith's turnaround time?

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.

It is now Monday morning,and I have looked into Mr. Moffitt's cartridge issues. It was delayed due to:

1) The manner in which he sent it from England caused us to pay import duties for these two high end cartridges. They were held by UPS while we fought with them over this issue, which was never resolved. We finally had to pay to receive them.

2) One had been worked on by VDH, and has serious issues - I cannot tell when the serious damage to the suspension occurred. Repair is risky; it may fail completely during the attempt, at which point I do not get paid anything.
3) The other cartridge has some very serious manufacturing flaws. VERY serious. Then it was damaged by the customer. I have repaired the customer damage aspect, but need to see if there is a simpler way to resolve the GLARING manufacturing error. This cartridge NEVER worked properly, and it is a very, very high end cartridge.

As these were both seriously damaged and flawed units, I bypassed them to think about new ways of resolving their issues BEFORE contacting Mr. Moffatt above. I will now contact him with the rather limited possbilities. It may well be that I will lose all the time I have into BOTH these cartrdiges, and even more time lost if I attempt and fail.

I am constantly stretched between stopping what I am doing at the microscope and contacting customers. If I interrupted myself more, my throughput would be far less, and my rates would go up. Also, like your doctor, I might be forced to charge you whether I succeed or not.

I do stop from time to time, sit at my desk and make a series of calls. That is the most efficient way to work for me at this time. What I *should* put on our retipping/rebuilding page is that if you don't hear from me in the allotted time frame, your cartridge has more serious propblems than normally found, and I am trying to either be creative about how to rebuild it with new techniques for less cost to you, or find a VERY quiet evening to spend on it without interruption.

Unlike my verbal responses, I often fix tough problems by first thinking extensively.

Peter Ledermann/Soundsmith

Peter,
I have to say I appreciate your time, experience, and pricing! Like I stated above(more or less in nicer words) many get caught up in these very expensive exotic carts. that ultimately many of us know they are in no way better or worse than one at 200 bucks in some cases(not all), and is exactly why you will continue getting many trying to give you a shot hoping to find that perfect deal and save them time and money.

This is exactly why many of these carts are only worth a "500.00 credit" from the manufacture but originally costs 5000! That has to tell somebody something when they get that deep into this hobby.

And by the way you should not feel to much guilt over this, fact of the matter these people took a shot, so A) they keep a cart. that is garbage anyway, no way to move forward, or B) they give you a shot and hope within the year they save it, and save them a lot of money. Your service is a difficult position to be in I am sure. Not saying this is an excuse for communication problems, separate issue.

Thank you for your responses and good luck with future business.

Thanks Peter. Your time is very valuable and i would not want you to spend additional time on cartridges that are not repairable. Those 2 cartridges were actually sent from Canada not England. I was not aware of the problem you have encountered with UPS on duties. There should be no duties between Canada and the USA under The North American Free Trade Agreement. I can understand duties if they had come to you from England. I am somewhat puzzled by this.

Whatever time you have invested in those 2 cartridges is valuable to you and me and i will pay for your time whether they are repairable or not. I do not expect you to do all this investigative work for free and no one should. Just let me know how much i owe you.

Note: Those 2 cartridges had been purchased "used" here on Audiogon as i did not have the means to purchase new. Never again will i do this. Live and learn!!!
Thanks again......

in my humble opinion this is certainly one of the most interesting and perspective-giving threads I have read on Audiogon thus far. Thank you everyone,

:) listening,

Ed