OK, I know the obvious response about this but moving past ditching the cat . . . I was playing my VPI Scout 'table with a Dynavector Karat cartridge when the cat (Jack) leaped onto the 'table. The tone arm slide across the record and the platter stopped. After addressing the situation, I didn't see any obvious problems (but I have an untrained eye) and dropped the needle. The tone arm immediately slide across the record to the center. Upon reflection, it seemed like the tone arm was light since it moved pretty effortlessly. Before taking it, I thought I would solicit some thoughts here.
Right. So my daughter is spending a year in China. My wife graciously agreed to keep her cat Maseo (Jane's Addiction). I can always replace the socks on my speakers but there is are two 6 thousand volt power supplies back there which I assure all of you, hurts. So my wife gets three of these electrified floor mats to stretch from one wall to the other in front of the system. The animal steps on it and gets a little zing which is supposed to keep him away right. We watched him step on it (we were watching Once Upon a Tine in Hollywood) think about it a second then walk right on an sit down! On the Mat! The cat likes it! Now the mats were on their lowest setting so Mr genius here turn them up to max and we'll see how the darn cat likes that. Scarlson, just get a dust cover. Tell the wife her cat busted your $2000 cartridge so you need to get another one to replace it. Then take your dust cover off every two years or so:)
Retipping KARAT is bad idea, all those people can do is to drop a huge amount of glue to fix the new tip, but look at the original Karat Ruby or Karat Diamond. Do you see any glue around the stylus tip ? Dyna cantilever is short and not available for retippers too.
If your stylus is damaged you’d be better with a new fully original cartridge. Karat series is not expensive and can be found under $700 (NOS)
Yup, Miller Carbon has the right idea. It’ll be much less expensive to have it retipped at Soundsmith. I’ve also gotten a couple of my carts retipped by a guy on eBay, whom I knew before he even started doing work through fleabay. He does excellent work. His eBay handle is cartridge_retipping-5, I believe. It’ll be easy to find him just by typing in cartridge retipping though. Good luck with everything, and try to remember that the cat was just being a cat. Lol
Thanks everyone! It does indeed look like the stylus is gone. Not sure if it can be repaired (the MusicDirect catalogue just arrived last week and the price of this sucker has soared)! Jack better find a job ASAP!
Thankfully, whenever Eddy has decided that the spinning platter is interesting, or tonearm moving up and down on a slightly uneven record requires attention, no serious damage has occurred. When my daughter was 9, and thought it would be a good idea to play "DJ" with my TT, it didn't work out so well. (For the cantilever that is... )
I agree with with Cleeds on the stylus being torn off the cantilever. Although that wouldn’t make any non-scientific measurable difference in weight. But if you have any kind of magnifying glass, look close at the end of the cantilever and see if the stylus I should gone. Either way, and I have to say it: what a Cat- astrophe!
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