Cartridge without serial?

What cartridge @j-wall ?

Actually a serial number itself if not a warranty, you can get warranty when you’re buying from official dealer and it’s dealer ship your cartridge to the manufacturer (not you).

Grey market seller often erase serial numbers or replace them with fake serial numbers, so the manufacturer can’t track the source.

I have serial numbers on every cartridge I got in my big collection of cartridges, except for one ZYX Airy III cartridge purchased from 2juki from Hong Kong! Upon my request the manufacturer confirmed it was a fake serial number, so no warranty!

As been stated million times on this forum:
Refurbishing some special high-end cartridges using different parts from re-tippers is a bad idea! 

Manufacturers of ultra high-end cartridges never refurbish or re-tip them, with warranty you have trade-in program to ship your old cartridge back to get brand new cartridge (even next model) with special discount. 

Chak, in one paragraph you contradicted yourself. You wrote that your ZYX aiRY III cartridge lacked a serial number, and then you also wrote that it had a fake serial number. You can’t have that both ways. Which is true? And this is the umpteenth time you have brought this up, so I gather you are really pissed off at 2Juki.

Read again, i said all my cartridges have serial numbers, except for that ZYX Airy III (with fake serial number), and I asked Mehran from SoraSound to check that number, it was there, but it was fake according to Mehran’s information). I don’t care about 2juki or whatever he is under many names, I just want to let other people what’s going on if they don’t know why serial numbers are fake (or removed completely). I don’t have my Airy anymore and I’m not interested in modern high-end cartridge grey market dealers are selling (I don’t buy them anyway at all for a long time).

I just share my experience with this particular cartridge (brand) because this is the only cartridge I bought with fake serial number from grey market dealer (I was hooked too, by the price ).

And I want to advice everyone to contact Mehran first when it comes to ZYX (he’s official importer in North America), because he can offer much more opportunities than a grey market seller in Hong Kong. People don’t even know what Mehran can offer privately! This is why my next ZYX was Premoum 4D from Mehran and the price was better than from grey market dealer! He even called me a few times over the phone and emailed many times, Mehran is one of those dealers you want to deal and he always ready to help (what you expect for a dealer) while juki barely can speak English (and you have no idea who he is).

Mehran and Nakatsuka-San (ZYX) know each other very well. I think they are pissed off about grey market dealer. 

As for the other brands/cartridge I really have nothing to say, some people always looking for discount for an expensive cartridges and I can understand it. What I don’t understand is why they are looking for very expensive cartridges if they can’t afford them from official dealers? For some people price is the only guide, not a quality, just price. They think if it’s more expensive then it must be better, but it’s a myth! But then those people are ready to ruin the signature sound with different parts from retippers, for those who retip/refurbish ZYX with SoundSmith I’d like to ask why don’t you buy SoundSmith own cartridges instead ? If you re-tip/rebuild with VdH then why don’t you buy VdH cartridges instead ?

Manufacturer sell cartridges only to his distributors in every region (Asia, Europe, America ...).

Distributor have to buy large amount of carts to get special wholesale prices.

Distributor can sell to the dealers, small shops or to private individuals online, but ONLY in his region!

I think the broken link is Asia and some distributor (or dealer) who can’t sell so much and willing to get rid of many cartridges quickly for very low price. This is a violation of the ethics, there are recommended retail price for dealers, when someone illegally sell for lower price worldwide on grey market (ebay) other dealers suffer.

When serial number replaced with fake number it’s impossible to track down the rat.

This is how it works in my opinion, maybe it’s more complicated, but manufacturer is happy to support only honest distributors, they are very important for manufacturer who can’t sell direct to the buyers.

@daveyf even if you know your distributors how you can catch one who sold to grey market dealers a bunch of them (if serial numbers replaced with fake number)? This is the only reason to remove or to replace serials, this is ID of the source. 

We're talking about thousands of cartridges, because the importers are in regions like Asia, Europe, North America covering huge territory with huge population of people and there are many audiophiles and high-end shops. Do you think Nakatsuka-San making 100 cartridges and for the whole Asia they have only 25 cartridges in stock? 

You can't be an importer if you can't sell a lot, you can't buy just like a small shop or private seller, you must buy many cartridges to sell in your country (or several countries).  

For example:

Even if you're buying 100 cartridges and then sell 50 privately to your grey market dealer in Hong Kong who list them for sale on ebay (for the price lower than suggested retail price anywhere in the world) to sell worldwide then you're a cheater, but your samples cannot be identified if you (as a dishonest importer) or your grey market partner decided to remove all serial numbers (or replaced them with fake serial numbers). 

Grey market dealer is a rat in the chain who sell worldwide for very low price, but official dealer can't sell worldwide, because he's a dealer ONLY in one region. They can't sell it lower than suggested retail price, they can't sell it lower than the price they paid, because importer sell to dealers expecting retail price policy from the dealers. 

Grey market dealers ruin the whole system of distribution.  

If a cartridge sold with fake serial number (or without serial number) then you can only guess if this cart passed quality control or not, the history of this cart is unknown. What is easy to do is to make it looks like sealed and never opened before in the box. On my sample the field for serial number in the manual was blank (it was a grey market sample from juki), but my next sample from Mehran (official US importer) was with serial number also printed in the manual and on cartridge body. 

Just checked the manual from my ZYX Premium 4D from Mehran (SoraSound) and there is a serial number field on warranty page with black ink stamp “PD108” and another layer in red “Premium 4D” stamp.

I have another ZYX product (headamp) with same black ink stamp “P1172”, also from SoraSound.


Even my Zyx Live18 headshell comes with serial number (also black ink stamp “S1994” in the manual)

@daveyf I'm tired arguing with you, if you think a manufacturer like ZYX and its designer Nakatsuka-San with at least 50 years experience in cartridge manufacturing can't make a thousands of cartridges nowadays under his own brand then high-end market must be completely dead. But again, they sell them all over the world, USA is a huge country, they sell in Russia, China and whole Europe ... Also they make so many different models from expensive to very expensive.  

Just checking ebay for Zyx and what caught my eye is that ones coming from Asia (known seller), and selling as new, are not perfectly packaged, missing the outer cellophane bag with a parallel sticker where cartridge model is printed, type is written by hand (manufacturer?) and serial number stamped. Box should have the serial number as the destination country initials. Both Zyx cartridges i have bought from local distributor here in Athens had serial number on cellophane bag, box and typed on manual, and the country initials (GR). Just check ebay to have a better picture. My simple understanding is that refurbished models are travelling around.

@petg60 yeah, thanks for posting this. 

I found a pic of the serial number on the back of my cartridge.
It reads C3724 and it doesn`t match the serial number on the booklet.
Interesting...

@scm very interesting