Koetsu Urushi opinions?

I am very biased in favor of my Koetsu Urushi.  I purchased it new in Tokyo, about 8-9 years ago, in the belief that I had Nirvana within my grasp.  My system has changed a great deal over the course of my ownership of the Urushi.  I was not blown away by the cartridge at first, but it did rise to the best of the very few cartridges that I owned back then, still not always "magic", as I had hoped.  Now my system is better in every way, and I can only say my Urushi is "good", but I now have about a dozen superb cartridges with which it has to compete.  Also, I am now wondering about wear on the stylus.  I keep meaning to send it to SoundSmith for an evaluation.  I hate to give up on it.  To sum up, it's nice but not as I had hoped.  My sample may need retip.

Thanks lewm.
 I owned the Rosewood Signature platinum some years ago, and enjoyed it. 
Not much info on the Urushi's
 

I have listened to an Urushi (gold flake) as well as a Rosewood Sig. for 15 years or so. The Urushi is a definite step up in resolution over the Rosewood series. Personally, I would bypass the more expensive Rosewood carts and jump to the Urushis. While the Koetsus are not as transparent as, say, a Goldfinger or perhaps a Shelter nor as fast as some others, they sound more natural to my ear. While they are lacking just a bit on the bottom end resolution, there’s not a lot of musical information down there to begin with. All they really need to be is crisp shall we say. The top end goes to 100k and it does that end of the spectrum beautifully. They really shine with mid to upper mid range tonal balance. While they are quite "full" sounding, I would not call them "lush" in a jammy sort of way. Their soundstage and image definition is as good as one could want in my opinion. For reference, here is my system:
- Rosewood Sig. mounted on a Grace 707 w/ Cardas wire mounted on a Logic DM101 table- Urushi mounted on a Grace 707 w/ Cardas wire on a Linn Sondek (for 45 rpm)- Audio Research Ref. Phono 2SE
- Audio Research Ref. 5SE Line Stage- Audio Research VT100 Mk III- Spendor SP-9 or Spendor BC-1s or Harbeth 40.2s
I have also listened to the Eminent Technology hybrid panels in this system extensively. (Quite open, airy, lovely as you would expect)
As you can see I’m a tube guy and my ear favors the BBC monitor philosophy.The Koetsus fit this ideal perfectly and really completes this sort of system.BBC monitors, tubes and Koetsus are really synergistic and do have a certain "sound".
I really can’t comment on how an Urushi would sound on solid state gear but I certainly wouldn’t expect them to fall apart. It may be that other "faster" carts will like transistors better.
At the end of the day this level of cartridge is not inexpensive but you really can’t screw up too bad with any of them.

Hope this helps
(sorry for the goofy formatting - I tried to fix it)

Thanks everyone. I ended up with a My Sonic Lab Signature Gold.  Around 50 hours on it, highly recommended !!

It is not my intention to bring my Slavic brother chakster
 in promblems but his ''parts'' approch by ''explainig'' carts
performance will get in trouble when we introduce ''paint''
as part of the MC kinds.
I owned Rosewood signature first an than got Urushi Blue.
I was not impressed by Rosewood but well by Urushi. Till I
got the informtion that Urushi is ''painted Rosewood''.
The different paints are assumed to give slightly different
''timbre'' to each of them. This expression is used to explain
musical instrument.  The problem for the most of us, except 
frogman, who is musician, is the lack of musical terminology.
This explains our verbal dificulty by posting our contrubutions.
Even some profesional ''analist'' were forced to use Chinese
expressions  to ''explain'' sound they imagined to hear.
I am slso very fond of ''explanations'' but am very reluctant
to use ''paint'' as argument for whatever else except paintings.  

Great musical cartridge get one soon.

Urushi revisited. Please see above for my original and long-standing opinion of my Urushi. ( I say “my Urushi” because these are hand made , and there may be sample to sample variations.) all of the foregoing evaluations were made using my upstairs audio system which consists of atma-sphere amplifiers driving Soundlab 845 PX speakers. The preamplifier was usually my atma -sphere MP1or the J & R solid-state phonolinepreamp. Most recently in this system  the Urushi was mounted on my Kenwood L07D tonearm using an Ortofon LH 9000 head shell, which weighs 18g by itself. In prior years it was on a Triplanar. The point of all this is to suggest that effective mass seems to have a great deal of effect on the sound of the Urushi . Because recently I moved the Urushi to my basement system which uses the beveridge 2SWs driven by a Manley Steelhead. The Urushi is now mounted on my Fidelity Research FR64S tonearm which has much higher effective mass than the L07D tonearm. Still using the 18g Ortofon headshell. The sound of the Urushi is transformed in this set-up. It’s everything I hoped for when I bought it 10 years ago. Perhaps it is true of all the high end Koetsu cartridges; they really need high effective mass to perform best. It’s not a revelation. Others have noted it before me, but just putting a heavy headshell on a medium mass tonearm, as on the L07D, was not sufficient to bring out the best in this cartridge.

@ nandric I was not impressed by Rosewood but well by Urushi. Till I got the informtion that Urushi is ''painted Rosewood''.
The different paints are assumed to give slightly different
''timbre'' to each of them.

This is simply untrue. The Urushi and the Rosewood series use totally different magnets and windings. (except for the Rosewood Platinum Signature).I find it interesting that you found the Urushi so impressive until you "discovered" its cosmetic difference. Then you ceased to be impressed. Some ear you've got there pal.

Pal you can't read.