Actually Stringreen hit on a very interesting topic with regard to high end audio. If you go to Wikipedia and search Stradivarious they talk about double blind testing and how inconclusive it has been for listeners to identify the Strad from the pretenders in various live auditon situations. The similarities and arguments pro and con for double blind listening tests are tremendously similar to our hobby.
I'm not sure that Stradivarious, BTW it was a family of string instrument makers and not just one, codified the instrument. Strings are tuned with pegs and there is no set tailpiece to tuning peg dimension as far as I can tell. Tuning the string to a particular pitch is made by adjusting the tuning peg. The accomplishments of the Strad family are very much ensconced in materials used, implementation, instrument size, and then of course the player using the instrument. Sounds a lot like high end audio and attempting to listen to and identifying a particular effect and from where it eminates in the audio chain.
More directly to the cartridge makers and their demise, the record was declared defunct about 23 years ago. What more can I say except it wasn't true and we are getting some of the best pressings ever 23 years later.
