It depends on the tonearm, but $100-150 should be enough for the job.
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If you pay someone else to do it, you are also likely to be paying a premium for the wire itself. The Audionote silver litz wire alone, for one example, may cost you more than Chakster's estimate for the whole job including labor, if the tech acquires the wire for you. My advice is to select and purchase your own wire and present it, along with your tonearm, to whoever does the work for you. You'll probably save a bit that way. |
I would estimate $100-150 for the labor alone. The cost of cable and connectors can vary all over the map. I replaced the Cardas wire and KLE plugs on my Analog Instruments Siggwan arm with ZavFino 1877Phono copper Litz wire. By that time I had already replaced the KLE Harmony plugs with KLE Absolute so I used the same Absolute plugs on the new wire. I thought the 1877Phono wire was a rather modest upgrade from the Cardas. I ended up replacing it with a Discovery cable that was even better. It’s been too long for me to recall the details but I remember especially liking the dynamics with Discovery. With the Discovery I followed Joe Dephillips’ advice not to use a continuous run of his tonearm wire but rather have the tonearm wires hand off to his Plus 4 interconnect a few inches out of the arm. I also used his recommended locking RCA plugs. |
@paulcreed I bought the Discovery cable already assembled directly from Discovery, not as raw cable. I assume the skinny wire portion is the 32g wire sold by PCX but I don’t know for sure. As I said, that wire only extends a few inches past the tonearm base. At that point it is spliced to Discovery Plus 4 interconnect which goes on to the RCA plugs. What I bought was the complete cable with 18” or so of the skinny tonearm wire at one end already connected to the Plus 4 with RCA plugs at the other end. All I had to do was connect it to the Siggwan arm tube. I should add that the tonearm wiring on the Siggwan is all on the outside of the arm tube. It fits into a groove on the underside of the arm tube. This makes swapping wires an easy task. Literally just a few minutes. |
As lewm suggests buy your own wire. It is really not hard to do yourself. You use the old wire to pull the new wire through. First disconnect the wires at both ends and make sure the old wire moves freely by gently moving back and forth just a little. Then solder the new wires to the old ones, pull the new wires through and disconnect the old wire. Finish both ends as indicated. If it really makes you nervous I would be happy to do it for you, no charge. Just cover the shipping. Mike |
thanks for the advice everyone. Knowing I was taking a big risk buying from Russia, I bought a 3 year warranty from Square Trade when I bought the tonearm ($110), they confirmed they will reimburse me. ..................................... I met both Steve and Ray Leung of VAS on Monday, what wonderful people with a love of audio and equipment. You are surrounded by a warehouse of vintage equipment, LP's, R2R tapes, and it is heart warming to see a father and son working together with such enthusiasm. They knew my Fisher 80-AZ's by sight when I showed them the photo, Steve said: if you ever want to sell them .... He has a few matched sets of EL37's but I didn't want to be tempted, so I didn't ask the price. They finished the bias of the Cayin yesterday, 2 days, what took so long?I'm lucky to live only 35 minutes from their shop. I'm gonna pick it up and drop off the tonearm. They already know about the silk covered Litz wire it has. I'll let them decide what wire they want to use, I am sure it will be high quality, and selected for the specifics of the arm and to avoid a repeat of the problem. Once I pick a pro I have confidence in, I make my desires/preferences known, then let them do their job in a way they can guarantee. They have rewired a lot of arms, we might do 1 in our lifetime (I hope no more). I saw a beautiful 12" SME arm they restored. I have an old 3009 series II in a box, I probably will have them overhaul it someday. ................................................ my problem: insulation worn off where UNPROTECTED wires exit the base (above the deck) causing slight hum. It's the weak link, a bad design choice. http://newartvinyl.ru/board/detali_proigryvatelja/tonarm_black_bird12_5_carbon/7-1-0-41 The new Blackbird design with integral DIN connector, and PROTECTED wires would have avoided this. http://newartvinyl.ru/board/detali_proigryvatelja/tonarm_black_bird12_5_5pin/7-1-0-53 If local, I would have recourse with NewArtVinyl, have the base changed from my RCA Junction Box to integral DIN. I may submit my bill to them when done, ask for some compensation, see what happens. Oh Happy Day. |
The OP did not ask about the cost of the cables, some of you can easily pay absolutely crazy amount for a short piece of super thin litz wire (for internal part of the tonearm). He asked about the cost of some pro to do the job. As I said it depends on the tonearm, if all you need is to disassemble some tonearm parts to remove 4x25cm thin wires from sme type bayonet to DIN connector then it can be very easy. Copper Cardas or Discovery litz will not cost you more than $60 for 50cm (which is enough for two tonearms). I don’t think this job can cost more than $100 in the real world! P.S. If your tonearm is the one without removable headshell and without DIN connector inside then it’s even easier, but in this situation you need one phono cable for internal and external parts of the tonearm in this configuration. |
@lewm I never paid anything for rewire in Russia, we did it with my friends (with Technics and Lustre tonearms) many times, it was super easy, took no more than 1 hour. I paid $150 to a technician in Asia for an EPA-100 rewire. I always provided my own wires purchased separately. Elliott does not have some esoteric tonearms, he’s got pretty basic vintage stuff, any technician who specializes in Technics service (all those DJ decks) can do that for cheap, there is nothing special. It’s absolutely crazy when someone charges $1500 for rewire including cable, but for audiophiles there are plenty of people who are happy to change 10 times more than any normal tech. It would be better to name a tonearm you want to rewire, Elliott ? |
If we are talking $1500, I completely agree with you, Chak. On the other hand, I would want an experienced pro to do the job for me, if I were to farm it out to someone else. (I can do it myself, too.) So a really qualified tech here in the US might charge $100 per hour or a bit more, with the wire costing extra. I think to do the job carefully, assuming a tonearm of average difficulty, might require 2 hours, but of course that is very dependent upon the construction of the tonearm, and if the tech has done dozens of that particular tonearm, then the work would go much faster. 1500 bucks is very crazy, indeed. |
chakster, everyone the tonearm is the one on the right side of photo #8 in my system shown here https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/9511 It’s the one chakster advised me not to buy. I dropped it off with Steve and Ray at VAS earlier today. Picked up the Cayin they biased for me. Except for the unprotected wire, they were impressed by it, especially liked the micrometer for VTA. They showed me a nice VPI junction box to use that will fit inside the dust cover and have a mini connector input/rca out: easily remove the arm. I asked them to paint over the text, change the ugly screws to black allen head. yes, yes, of course. https://www.vpiindustries.com/store/p254/Junction_Box.html |
Alrighty, VAS re-wired the tonearm, done in one week. Steve and Ray are wonderful to know and work with. https://vasnyinc.com/ VAS also provided and installed a new VPI 4 pin mini-connector and RCA Junction Box, and a separate tonearm ground wire. https://www.vpiindustries.com/store/p254/Junction_Box.html Total, including the new junction box: $435. What wire? The one Steve uses for all tonearms he re-wires (I didn’t ask about customer specified wire). .............................................. Square Trade approved the repair cost and is mailing me a check. Thank goodness I bought a 3 year warranty for $110. when I bought the arm from Russia. I knew it was a risk. ............................................................. Luckily VAS is only 35 minutes from me, so I left it on the removable tonearm board, drove it to them, they worked without changing my VTA height .... Board right back in, re-align the cartridge, listen! They stopped by yesterday to have a listen and peek at my 3 systems and totally trashed garage with the inherited LPs. Hum was caused by insulation being worn off at the silk covered Litz wires at the point of exit from the gimbal and thru a sharp edged hole in the base. A design flaw, solved by VAS, and by newartvinyl on their new 5 pin din model. http://newartvinyl.ru/board/detali_proigryvatelja/tonarm_black_bird12_5_5pin/7-1-0-53 ........................................................... |