A Soundsmith Re-tip Believer

NASA. Say, wasn’t that the outfit that killed all those people on the exploding Space Shuttles? Thanks but no thanks.

I am always surprised when you guys use the term "Dead Quiet".   Hasn't everything in the last 40 years been dead quiet? After all, we had to send an analogue signal to the moon, then send back an  analogue reply from a battery power supply.  Since a minuscule amount of the ever widening, transmitted signal reached a quarter of a million miles away, silence became golden. Dead quiet was perfected a half century ago.  Why do you think so many designers came from the space program, e.g. Julius Siksnius of Audire (Apollo rocket scientist), Stuart Taylor (Bryston, Adcom), and others?   Plenty of other people figured out how to use products developed for space exploration, products that all came from the original output transistors co-opted from NASA for early car electronic ignitions.  What exactly still hums, hisses, etc?  Hell, The original Audire Diffet 1 preamp had plenty of gain to run a low output M/C cartridge, without a head amp.  (The 1A effectively got a diminish circuit switch to keep from blowing your speakers when switching back to a higher output source.)

According to my mom I was the most beautiful baby in the world.

:)) 

I've had quite a few cartridges retipped by van den Hul over the years. He did a great job on my Dynavector Ruby. Since he has retired I would be tempted to use Soundsmith because I hate to throw a good cartridge away.

Love my Soundsmith cart.
The retip cost is reasonable & will be perfect, as it is a Soundsmith cart.

@chakster 

I rest my case.  

Just buy a Nagaoka MP-200  , does 98% of what can be done  and
is $480 and a new stylus goes for 300 $.
I use Last  stylus treatment and looking through a Carl Ziess scope showed no real wear at 900 hours .

Thanks frogmans, I am sure that my mom would love me 
independent from any text I have written. But my dad would be
proud to read your text about his son. I am not sure about
Barolo but you would probably get one whole litre of
Slivovitz as present.  

"Am I the only one that doesn’t follow what your trying to say?"

sdrsdrsdr, hang in there.  In creative writing is sometimes found equally creative thinking.  Certainly in the case of this writer.  Not to mention, a good bit of wisdom.  I'm thinking it is a Barolo in that glass 😀

The Denon DL103 is an example. It can be improved by a different cantilever and stylus. JICO made a living by producing improved stylus / cantilever packages for cartridges. That doesn't make the designers stupid. They just designed to a price point.  

@bpoletti The idea to produce styli for discontinued MM cartridges is great, but JICO also made them to keep the price low, except for SAS which is the most expensive. But even SAS can't surpass original MR on many vintage MM, i think they are equal. Cheaper JICO styli are not better than originals (especially those originals with beryllium cantilevers), it is only compromise (something better than nothing) for many owners of old MM.

Upgrading a Denon 103 does not make its designer stupid, it was designed in the 60's and today standard is different, but it's questionable (at least for me) why not just buy a better cartridge instead? If someone willing to end up with triple price with their DL103 it's ok, but i just don't get the logic behind this process since better cartridges available at the same price. 

Regarding modern cartridges i think it's possible to buy a better one, no ? 

 

     

sdrsdrssdr, By analysis one can interpret written text on its on
or analyse the person who wrote te text. Either the writer formulated
his text poorly in the sense of being unclear or the reader was
not capable to understand the text. You said ''I'm not meaning to
sound rude'' which suggest that you have ''some idea'' about the 
writer which may but not necessarily so be ''right''. 

@nandric 


What are you talking about? Is it just me. Sorry, I’m not meaning to sound rude. Am I the only one that doesn’t follow what your trying to say?

My dear ''twin brother'', There is, alas, just one thing which is easy
to recognize by some Slavic descendants: the ''IC'' at the end of
their family names.'' Alas'' because they have nothing more in 
common. I learned from logical explanation of ''identity'' that each
person has its own. Such that there are no two persons in the world
with the same identity. Except by twins? I would like to stay ''unique''
but  already have two brothers: Don (Griffithd) and chakster. 
The former is the ''older twin'' the later the'' younger one''.

Dear tooblue, Thanks for the support: ''mothers don't lie''. But
my point was to demonstrate ''mothers love'' in the sense of
exaggerated subjectivity. This was meant as allusion to
''Peter lovers''. His story is similar to Van den Hul's story.
The illusion that ''the master himself'' does all those repairs as
well the carts. We in Holland are better informed. Anyway about.
van den Hul .

Dear chakster, It was not the relative value of British currency
 that made my choice for Expert stylus. However it has ''something'' 
to do with the money. Even my good friend Axel Schurholz was not
(anymore) willing to do ''stylus only'' retip. He prefered the whole
cantilever&stylus combo ''refurbishing'' because this was much
more easy to do while the reward was much bigger: 500 euro
versus 200 euro. The first mentioned price was ,uh, European ,
the second European translation of British currency. 
To my surprise ''Expert stylus'' does not only repairs but produce
also their own styli , as you mentioned, and MC cartridges. The
new Decca styli are also made by ''Exprt stylus''. 

@chakster 

Improvements in performance due to a Soundsmith may be related to materials.  Consider that some "pretty good" performing carts used aluminum cantilevers and spherical or elliptical stulii.  The Denon DL103 is an example.  It can be improved by a different cantilever and stylus.  JICO made a living by producing improved stylus / cantilever packages for cartridges.  That doesn't make the designers stupid.  They just designed to a price point.  

There was a significant shortage of Boron when the Lyra Clavis and Clavis Da Capo cartridges were manufactured.  It seems Mr. Carr was compelled to use ceralloy material for the cantilevers of Lyra cartridges (I think even the Parnassus series).  The change to Boron cantilevers has been reported by several other Lyra cart users, including at least one other 'gon forum contributor as improving the performance of, in particular, Clavis series carts.  

Sometimes, a different stylus size can play a different section of the groove. 

Yeah, Expert Stylus in UK is @nandric favorite, especially then the GBP exchange rate is no lonres so strong as it was before (when it was almost twice as much than USD). 

I've heard about Expert Stylus and even contacted them few times, they are very nice in communication. I knew them because of the Stanton/Pickering fan club, seems like the Expert Stylus was the manufacturer of the Stereohedron diamonds for Stanton/Pickering in the 70s/80s/90s.  

@chakster
Goldring offers retip services.

Expert Stylus was the European approved service facility for the time when the elder Sugano was retired. They also have their own cut for diamond profile.

@chakster, the stylus for my Grace that I am waiting on from Soundsmith is his replacement stylus of his own design that he has a limited supply of, it is his Ruby Optimum Line Contact and it is replacing a Soundsmith level 2 ruby rebuild of the original. Thank you for the offer of an original as that was very gracious of you and might remind you of this at a later date. Enjoy the music

@nandric and I were separated at birth as identical twins, sadly I got the fat gene... but the acute hearing

i have so far had Peter and team do three rebuilds, all turned out as cost effective 

One question for everyone:

If a refurbished cartridge is almost always better than the original cartridge (as many people claimed here) then why all those experienced  cartridge designers are so stupid that they can't make what re-tippers can? 

There must be some secret, right ? Only re-tippers know how to upgrade the a cartridge to the next level, but for some reason most of the re-tippers never produced their own cartridge. Indeed, why ? Because so many people standing in the line to send them all those cartridges from internationally renowned designers pretending for upgrade. 

Ruby are indeed very attractive (visually), i like ruby and sapphire cantilevers on my cartridges. Beryllium was an ideal material, but it does not look so attractive and no one can offer beryllium cantilever anymore, none of those retippers.

Regarding SoundSmith i think everyone should try his own cartridges if you like so much his cantilevers on some other cartridges. 

Probably his own design is even better as it must be a pinnacle of his knowledge and research. Right ? 

Garrott brothers retipped all those Koetsu, Decca cartridges in the past and their reputation was second to none. Their own MM cartridges are still available, even their own vintage MC (very rare). 

Any other re-tipper who actually design cartridges ? Yes, Van Den Hul, but he's retired ? 

Anyone else ? Please remind me 

@tooblue

I too am in the Soundsmith rebuild/retip camp. Currently waiting on his Grace F9 Ruby Optimum Line Contact replacement stylus for my Grace

I’ve seen his own (completely different) styli for Grace, did you try ?

I’m a big fan of grace original sound and i have almost every model and almost every styli made by Grace for F9, F14, LEVEL II.

It would be nice if you could compare SS to some of the best Grace (RS14 styli are compatible with F9, but F14 LC-OFC generator is also huge upgrade over standard F9 generator).

My favorite original stylus for F14 (compatible with F9) is the one with beryllium cantilever.

When you're ready for original Grace let me know, maybe i could help with sealed NOS styli, i have many. 

I cannot understand the attraction for vinyl in the first place when you can stream noiselessly for a whole lot money and you never have to get off your seat to change a record. Turn tables are really cool looking but they also collect a lot of dust. I think one of these days we will see turn tables in museums and the young people will wonder why people ever bought them.

Young people actually buying turntables right now, normally very cheap turntables, but they want it, believe it or not. Those young cats born in the digital era having fun with vinyl and turntables, because it’s a physical object and the best media format ever made. It’s cool and nothing can replace it. Digital is just a free bonus and a part of our digital life nowadays, but vinyl is something special and this is why a lot of cool records getting more and more expensive over the years, while digital versions available for free. What young cats never buying is CDs.

Digital podcasts and radiostation stream ... this is all cool to discover music to buy on vinyl. 

Perhaps people who like vinyl like noise with their music in order to replicate music hear during the 1920’s to 1950’s?

Noise is everywhere outside your window if you’re living in the big city, from your neighbours etc ... Maybe it’s noise free in the bunker or in the private house somewhere in the woods ? But living in the big city is not noise free, unfortunately. The noise from vinyl is hard to detect in the normal listening session.

I’m not sure that music from the 1920 is interesting for young generation, but music from the 60s, 70s, 80s was a source for sampling for next generation of music producers and actually modern music based on samples, this is why for young generation the original source of samples is something interesting, people may never heard the original before, only via their favorite producers who samples very short piece of music from the past to build everything around these beautiful pieces, because modern producers often can’t even play real instruments - this is also a part of the digital era, the era of sampling.

Vintage vinyl and music from the 70’s era is amazing source for new discoveries when musicians and recording engineers were trained to make it live (not edits, often in one take in the studio).

@larry5729.    
This is what people said in the 80’s. I wanted digital to replace vinyl too, but it didn’t. If it did for you, that’s great. But for many of us the expense and effort is worth it for the better performance. The same goes for people into master tape. It’s even more expensive and even more effort and more inconvenient. But even better performance. 

@nandric, as Johnny Mercer said, " you must of been a beautiful baby". Mothers don't lie. Enjoy the music

Well Larry doesn't get it. Good, that leaves more of those noisy inferior albums for me. Enjoy the music

I cannot understand the attraction for vinyl in the first place when you can stream noiselessly for a whole lot money and you never have to get off your seat to change a record.  Turn tables are really cool looking but they also collect a lot of dust.  I think one of these days we will see turn tables in museums and the young people will wonder why people ever bought them.

Perhaps people who like vinyl like noise with their music in order to replicate music hear during the 1920's to 1950's?

Funny how these conversations go to the extremes. A third party retipper will make a lowly cartridge into a top end performer, or they butcher it and no possible way it can be anywhere as good as it was. I suppose with many things the mode of probability is somewhere in between the two polar points.

So what wears or changes in a cartridge? Diamond, damping materials, and suspension tightness in the tie wire are the three major things that come to mind.

Regarding diamonds. Getting information on how cartridges are built and where parts and materials come from is pretty tough. But many cartridges manufacturers appear to source their diamond and cantilevers from a supplier, with Namiki and Ogura being recognizable ones. I would imagine that bigger companies may get their own variations on a cut, but how much of a difference is there going to be in final sound quality on line contact cut variations as long as the diamond is of comparable mass and quality?

In the 70’s and 80’s damping material had a finite shelf life. It was not uncommon to hear of cartridges that had its internals go rock hard and have tracking issues. It does seem that the change into more durable synthetic materials have made this issue less of a factor. Does damping material change enough to alter its sound over along period of time? Maybe, but I am not sure how you would verify that without waiting 20 years.

Suspension, this makes sense its able to stretch and wear over time, and that it can have an effect on the overall sound. Depending on how accessible the insides of a cartridge is, it can be adjusted. But how do you know how much tension can be applied? How much tension can the wire take at its age? Not sure how you answer those questions, I think it comes down to the skill of the technician. How closely they listen to the cartridge, how often they have done this work on this model, and so on and so forth.

So the question becomes how much effort is invested in refurbishing the cartridge? Is it just graft a cantilever on and send it out? Do they perform more of a refurbishment? Are they one of the places that can grind off the old diamond and replace it to the existing cantilever? Also how accessible is the internals of the cartridge being worked on? Some cartridges cannot be accessed.

The end conclusion is how close can the cartridge be brought to its OEM level? If a refurbishment costs $500 and it gets the cartridge back to 95 to 98% of its capability, Is that a worthwhile expense? Or some folks are more comfortable sending it back to the factory for exchange and the costs of $1000/$2000 or more is money well spent in their eyes. You got to make your choices, and decide what works best for your particular situation.

Peter's crew does a fantastic job. Anyone who hasn't dealt with him doesn't know what they're missing...

I had Soundsmith retip an old Monster Cable Sigma Genesis 2000 phono cartridge and they did a terrific job.

According to my mom I was the most beautiful baby in the world.

I had Soundsmith rebuild my old Sumiko Talisman Alchemist IIIs. (was manufactured in late 80's/early 90's) The original had a sapphire cantilever. Replaced with a ruby cantilever. Sounds brand new, if not better.  Well worth it!

Ive written to Soundsmith about my Empire EDR.9 cartridge. The styli are extremely rare, but I have 2 carts and 2 styli, one used, one NOS NIB.

It’s an MI cart, tapered aluminum canti, LC nude stylus. At the end of the canti it has an inertial damper to reduce resonance in the 20-26 kHz region. This cart was Empire’s TOTL cart in 1979-1985, before Empire died, hence the scarcity of styli.

i was told they haven’t retipped one of these yet, but they want to try one. I was told that with the ruby cantilever, the inertial mass damper was not necessary. But, ruby is heavier than hollow aluminum; so there goes tip mass.

Anyone with ideas on this? 

I sent an old, tired Lyra Clavis Da Capo to Soundsmith for "retipping."  We agree on using a solid Boron cantilever and line contact stylus for the "rebuild."  The results were interesting.  The cartridge was cleaned, the motor was unchanged.  I don't think they did anything with the suspension.  

The sound was better than I recalled from the CdC.  The cartridge was always clean, but with the change of cantilever material and stylus size / shape, instruments were more fleshed-out with tighter images and defines space.  A very nice improvement over the original cartridge.  

And for the meager price of the "rebuild" I got a cartridge that fits firmly into a higher performance group than the original.  

Dear chakster, This so called ''cart-exchange'' consist in an new
generator glued in the old body. I have the bill from Koetsu for
2200 euro. As you probably know Koetsu uses the same generator
in different cartridges. To me it make no sense to pay 2200 euro
instead of, say, 500 for an new cantilever/stylus combo by one
repair service. I got this Koetsu for 1500 euro on German ''audio-
markt''. The mentioned bill was included.

I too am in the Soundsmith rebuild/retip camp. Currently waiting on his Grace F9 Ruby Optimum Line Contact replacement stylus for my Grace, main system is running a ZYX Universe with his solid boron cantilever and a Line Contact stylus. Have had his rebuild service done 9 times and have had one cart that the service was a side move and not an improvement over the stock cartridge, with that said, when things get back to normal I will be sending him my Miyabi Standard for evaluation as well as my Dynavector DRT XV1s for the solid Boron cantilever with Line Contact stylus rebuild. The normal naysayers will all chime in with their takes as usual, most have already but just ignore them as I do and enjoy the music.

I had my old Dynavector XX2MKII refurbed (as Chakster put it), and to my ears (with the new ruby cantilever), it came back a better cartridge than I remember it being new.

As a nearly $2000 cartridge, a $400 refurb is a good deal, at least to me.

BR,
Dan

Even cart producers would need an extra worker for retips.
They also get the same cantilever/stylus combo's ready-made
by supplier. Why should one retiper in an factory be better than
the usual kind? BTW there are ''usual kinds'' with +40 years experience . There is no such ''animal'' by cart producers.

@nandric 

Cartidge producers at Dynavector never refurbish their cartridges or re-tip them, i think in this world the policy is to give a customer the best (aka brand new cartridge with warranty) instead, but with very special discount to support this service policy of exchange. 

No doubt that Peter is one of the best in business, but the OP has a brand NEW cartridge, not something old or special. His cartridge is still available in the shops and i believe supported by Dynavector for exchange. Better (different) cartridges are also available even at lower cost (including those MI from SoundSmith). 

Dead quiet or not - this is not a character of the sound. The best way is to compare refurbished to the original in the same system and then it will be fair comparison. Vinyl can't be dead quiet anyway, it is not digital. Even mastertape has some tape hiss.

SoundSmith can't repair many cartridges, because they are unique, some of them are Dynavector with short Ruby or Diamond cantilevers, no one can get those cantilevers anymore. This is one example why re-tipper is not the best solution, not in every situation and it's primarily depends on the cartridge design. Sometimes they simply can't help.

Not to go off track from this post, but this relatively recent article adds to the discussion of the cantilever/mass and what Peter (Retipper) has discussed about a benefit of his moving iron (MI) cartridges - "Vibration analysis of stylus instrument for random surface measurement", available http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/5705/. While Peter uses the term ’Jitter’, the article uses the term ’Tip Flight’, but the result is the same. While the article is not specific to a vinyl record, the correlation is unmistakable. This article does present that the optimum damping ratio is 0.5 to 0.7, and this would then support Peter’s claim to the benefit of the lower mass of the MI design; less mass means less work required to damp the mechanism.

Otherwise I am fan of Soundsmith MI cartridges beyond the performance, the benefit of being able to rebuild the cartridge - not just retip, but replacing the critical suspension system all at nominal cost is a significant benefit.

Right. And nothing off-track about it. OP said, "The sound? Dead quiet." And this is the reason why the sound is dead quiet. Less mass, more damped, equals less stylus bouncing around means less noise equals dead quiet.

This also answers the question:

Why should one retiper in an factory be better than the usual kind?

Because clearly we are not talking merely about a re-tip. We are not even talking about "the usual kind" (whatever that is) of re-tipper. We are talking about Peter Ledermann, a man who has spent 40+ years not merely re-tipping and refurbishing and designing and building cartridges, but studying every aspect of their performance to the point he has developed knowledge and understanding of things like jitter that is able to make even a relatively affordable cartridge "dead quiet".

thehorn made a smart move going with Peter. One of the Greats. Enjoy!

I also do believe that these ruby and sapphire cantilevers can be broken much more easier than boron.

@millercarbon,

Not to go off track from this post, but this relatively recent article adds to the discussion of the cantilever/mass and what Peter (Retipper) has discussed about a benefit of his moving iron (MI) cartridges - "Vibration analysis of stylus instrument for random surface measurement", available http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/5705/. While Peter uses the term 'Jitter', the article uses the term 'Tip Flight', but the result is the same. While the article is not specific to a vinyl record, the correlation is unmistakable. This article does present that the optimum damping ratio is 0.5 to 0.7, and this would then support Peter's claim to the benefit of the lower mass of the MI design; less mass means less work required to damp the mechanism. 

Otherwise I am fan of Soundsmith MI cartridges beyond the performance, the benefit of being able to rebuild the cartridge - not just retip, but replacing the critical suspension system all at nominal cost is a significant benefit.

According to philosophy of  science ''truth and falsity'' have
nothing to do with believe. An statement is true or false independent
from our belief. We can't make an true statement false by believing.
Even cart producers would need an extra  worker for retips.
They also get the same cantilever/stylus combo's ready-made
by supplier. Why should one retiper in an factory be better than
the usual kind? BTW there are ''usual kinds'' with +40 years experience . There is no such ''animal'' by cart producers. 

Glad you like it, with relatively cheap cartridges upgrade is always possible, but you forgot to mention the total price you paid. Was it $850 cartridge from the start? And as i can see SS price for your new cantilever is $400?

What you did is not a re-tip, you’ve got new cantilever, it’s refurbishing job, Peter replaced conventional Aluminum cantilever with more exotic Ruby cantilever.

Re-tip is replacement of the tiny diamond tip on existing cantilever.

Dynavector Micro Reach (or Micro Ridge) diamond is great, not sure why anyone think that Optimized Contour Nude Contact is any better ?

Of course it was better idea to replace the whole cantilever, because the only benefit of the aluminum cantilever and micro ridge combo is the fact that nude diamond goes through the cantilever (pressure fit). Replacing just the needle tip on sch cantilever will ruin the whole principle and will require more complicated job and a lot of glue to fix the diamond.

In this situation you’re getting better Ruby cantilever with equal diamond.

But Dynavector cartridges like DV23RS MR in NOS condition with unique short Ruby Prism cantilever and Micro Ridge stylus available for about $500. And it is not the only alternative to your DV.

For those who prefer refurbished over original it might be ok, i do not belong to this group of people.

Re-tip or Refurbishing is problematic with much more complicated cartridges that already comes with exotic cantilevers and diamonds from the start, sometimes refurbishing is downgrade for such exotic cartridges, because the choice of cantilevers is limited for re-tipper, cartridge manufacturer have exclusive access for their own cantilevers. This is where standard option from SoundSmith and others is not the best solution. Also i’m not sure how compliance issue can be solved.

But anyway, for some average cartridges anyone can ask retipper for better cantilevers or diamonds, the only question is the cost in comparison to the cost of a brand new better (original) cartridge.

A high Output MC cartridges must be compared first to MM or MI if the owner have some limitation on his phono preamp, because even if the SoundSmith system claimed to be a low mass the High Output MC required more coil winding and as a result you have higher moving mass which is not benefit (for Moving Coil system).

The sound? Dead quiet.

This is because of one of Ledermann's design principles, reducing jitter by reducing mass and resonances in the stylus/cantilever/generator system. This is something he's discussed at length in videos and audio show seminars. Also Paul Beckett designer of the Onkk Cue turntable has the same view, that the majority of noise we hear playing records is jitter, their term for resonant energy in the cantilever/motor system to cause the stylus banging back and forth in the groove. Its pretty cool you can hear it in action now with your re-tip.