Broken cantilever Need options...


Hello All,

I am a recently entrant to the dark side, I had suspected that I would be initiated at some point. Well, that point in time came last night. As I attempted to put the stylus guard on my Clearaudio Concerto, I heard a tiny snap. Yep, you guessed it, cantilever broke clean off. Can't find it anywhere in my berber carpeting.:tears:

Well, I chose to sleep it off rather than stew in it, and when I woke up this morning to research my options, I quickly learned that I just became a member of a very large and anything-but-exclusive club. I bought the cart used as part of a bundled package. So far, I understand my options to be as such:

1) Buy a new one ($2,750 MSRP);

2) Send to retailer for re-tipping. $1,500 option for online retailers that I've checked;

3) Send to retailer for trade-in. Haven't gotten a price yet, but I'm guessing that will be more than the re-tipping will cost;

4) Send to Soundsmith for re-tipping. Probably between $300-$450, but obviously not OEM;

5) Sell cartridge as is.

I'm open to any other suggestions. Dark side, indeed!
asindc
Soundsmith does top notch work. If I were in your situation, I would contact Peter at soundsmith to see if he could repair it. I am almost certain he could. It all comes down to how much money do you want to spend. If it bothers you that the replacement cantilever won't be OEM then, you need to send it back to the manufacturer. Contact soundsmith and see what they say. Best re-tips in the business
There's also the possibility that the Soundsmith cantilever repair is *better* than the OEM.
If the cantilever of your Concerto is aluminum I can recommend Axel with his pressure fitted line contact stylus in a aluminum cantilever. This is his 'best proposition' in terms of quality-price relationship (+/- 160 Euro). With the boron cantilever the cost rise to 359 Euro. Info : schallplattennadeln.de
While I'm not familiar at all with his prices , I'm pretty sure that van den hul uses boron for cantilevers, the same material you had. It might be worth giving him a call , his work certainly speaks for itself as well. Just another option to try. Soundsmith is the first name that came to my mind too though.
'giving him (vd Hul)a call'? If he is his (vd Hul's)suster she may succeed. This guy has no idea what he is talking about. But he was obviously in the shop ,for which no one in Holland knows where it is, and observed just one kind of the cantilevers: the boron kind. Bravo!