Five or more years ago, I would have come down heavily against buying a used cartridge. About that time, I got interested in vintage MM and MI cartridges, thanks to "the thread". At that point, I started buying used and NOS vintage cartridges with alacrity, always after careful selection of sellers, as far as that can ever be done. I must be lucky, because I have never received a cartridge that did not "work", out of the box. One can never say that an aged NOS or used cartridge is working exactly as well as it otherwise could work, but I only have detected subpar performance with one of my oldies, and that is a Grado TLZ that in fact I bought new about 35 years ago.The caveat here is that I have not listened to all the cartridges I bought during that spree. One of those that I have yet to audition, and which is clearly not NOS, is an AKG; these are notorious for losing signal on one channel, and visual inspection of my sample reveals that the cantilever is deviated to one side and may be sagging as well. However, if I never listen to the AKG, I may be able to say my record is perfect. Nevertheless, this adventure has given me many hours of pleasure for relatively little cost, and I don't regret it for a minute. In fact, with less zeal than before, I am still looking for certain models. Anyone got an Astatic for sale?
