Cartridge reliability


Not having purchased a cartridge in at least 15 years, and probably more, I’m curious what has been your recent experience with cartridge reliability. Any cartridge failures? Significant channel imbalance? Loss of a channel? Suspension collapse? Etc. My focus is on moving coil cartridges.

I’m trying to get an idea of which manufacturers are tops in terms of reliability/QC and which have a thing or two to yet learn. I’m asking as my cartridge, though still sounding quite nice, surely can’t last forever. 
For instance, I’ve read about some albeit quite rare problems with Lyra, but I can’t recall ever hearing about any Dynavector issues. I have heard of some issues with Goldring 

your own user experience is appreciated!

thanks! 
zavato

Showing 1 response by pindac

The Defects that the OP has referred to are to be found in Cartridges.
Not all Cartridges will have suffered from the conditions being referred to, but there is always a possibility that  there are Few Individuals who have had a unsatisfactory experience with a Cartridge, when it comes to it maintaining a Good Condition.

What matters from that point on,
is whether it was a experience when the Cartridge was a relatively New Model with little use, or whether it was a Long Term owned Cartridge with a long life of usage behind it.

The next thing that matters is how the Cartridge Owner felt they had been dealt with when reporting their discovered defect to a Supplier.

If the OP were to make a list of Cartridges that have their attention ?

A Google Search should show up Cartridge Owners experiences with possible reporting on any reliability issues to be seen.
In some cases, there will be a clear description of how the
Cartridge Owner felt about how they were supported when reporting their experience back to a supplier.

I have adopted this method to learn about a few Cartridge Brands.