Koetsu Restoration

Many thanks for this post. I have a 20 year old Koetsu Black that is still quite functional, but some theorize that age alone ought to point me toward replacement or restoration. My only concern about any of the restorers is that I get the impression that the Koetsu will come back with more "air" and "detail" after the rebuilds...which scares me, because one listener's "air" and "detail" is another listener's painful brightness and edge. (I talked to 2 restorers about this, one in the States and one in the UK, who told me to expect this change.)

So, could you tell us just a bit about how the sound is different on the rebuild from what it was before - recognizing that you can't A-B them, of course.

Many thanks.

For what it's worth, I ended up buying a new Koetsu Black instead of having my 20 year old one rebuilt. I liked the old one reasonably well, but I have to admit, there was no real comparison. I think that those that postulated that the innards of the old one would have dried out (or whatever) and become less responsive were correct. (This wasn't a stylus issue...it just didn't have that many hours on it--1000, maybe 1500.) The new one seems wonderful, for my taste.

Markc2, the Koetsu is very low output. I didn't have a pre-pre in my pre-amp, so got a EAR 834P, which seems to be a really fine match for the Koetsu. Very recently, I got a Rhea, which I frankly don't like as much as the EAR so far, but it's not yet broken in yet, and everyone tells me to just give it time. I know that Koetsu used to make a transformer/step-up (because I still have mine). Don't know how good they are, but one guy told me to hang onto it...I guess they're kind of rare.