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Koetsu Restoration

I just finished a weekend listening to a Koetsu Black I had restored by Soundsmith and thought I should share this with other members. I had it restored with Soundsmith's Ruby Cantilever and Optimized Contour. Their top of the line restoration. I have to confessed I never expected the out of the box performance I heard on this cartridge. I installed it on a second system and my wife said it sounded better than my main system which is $10K more expensive. The level of expression and musicality on this restored cartridge was beyond my expectations. Enough said! Before you discard your old cartridge you may want to consider a restoration. I did and I am really happy with the results. This is the first time I have had a cartridge restored and I am already considering the restoration of two other classic cartridges I have.
dserran

Showing 1 response by pauly

pauly
1,012 posts
 
Soundsmith does a retip on Koetsus, they do not (as far as I know) rebuild the Koetsu. The only folks that do that are Koetsu themselves. I have had a Soundsmith retip twice on my Rosewood, and sonically it was at least as good as the original.

Sadly the Soundsmith tip proved very fragile in my environment and I lost both tips after a couple of hundred hours play time. Peter quite graciously retipped my cart at no charge, no questions asked the second time round, but I decided to have a factory rebuild (and upgrade to Signature level) this last time.

To your pint, it is definitely worth while to have a vintage cart retipped/rebuilt as they normally have a lot of life left in the motors after the tip has expired.

Regards
Paul
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