New cartridge vs. Re-tipped

It's costly to do but there is no way I would send my Lyra cartridges to a 3rd party for retip. Factory rebuild is the way to go, especially with Etna and Atlas.

I have a Koetsu Rosewood Signature with a missing stylus. It was given to me by a dealer that was going to throw it in the trash after replacing with a different cartridge for a customer. I plan to have it repaired after I decide what retipper to send it to.

On a few occasions we have been contacted by Wally Tools and other cartridge inspection services regarding excessively lax stylus alignment tolerances of Lyra cartridges.
The customer had bought a new cartridge, and was displeased with the results.

After having the cartridges returned to Japan, a thorough inspection and teardown revealed that the cartridge wasn't new, but had seen considerable use, and had been retipped by another manufacturer / retipper.

Nonetheless, who received the blame initially? The original manufacturer. Us.

Apart from the seller of the cartridge, and the company that charged for the retip work, such affairs leave everyone involved unhappy.
The customer got conned into buying a cartridge that was represented as being new or like new, but wasn't, and wasn't a capable performer. Wally Tools wasted time and effort measuring the cartridge and telling us that we had errored, when the misaligned stylus was someone else's doing.
We wasted time and energy measuring the cartridge, stripping it down, discovering that we weren't responsible, and informing Wally Tools of our findings.

At the very least, it would be nice if every seller of cartridges retipped by companies other than the original manufacturer would be clear regarding the provenance and nature of the remedial work that has been performed.

Grrrr...

kind regards,
jonathan

On a few occasions we have been contacted by Wally Tools and other cartridge inspection services regarding excessively lax stylus alignment tolerances of Lyra cartridges.
The customer had bought a new cartridge, and was displeased with the results.

After having the cartridges returned to Japan, a thorough inspection and teardown revealed that the cartridge wasn't new, but had seen considerable use, and had been retipped by another manufacturer / retipper.

Oof, that was very unfair and understandably frustrating to jcarr and Lyra. Wally shoud have been more familiar with the stock Lyra stylus mount (interface fit?) for that model, as I’m guessing this 3rd party used a different kind which should be immediately apparent under magnification. 

If going with a 3rd party retipper, I think it’s best to find someone able to respect the original manufacturer’s choice of cantilever / stylus / mount technique, as much as possible. The better ones should also be capable of neatly winding new coils and other sophisticated repairs, as a last resort - because sometimes an incident involves deeper damage than just stylus / cantilever. IMO the less desirable 3rd parties  will bolt on one of their "stock" cantilever assemblies to every cartridge model. You see a Koetsu with ruby cantilever? Don’t send your Koetsu there lol. 

@rsf507 @chayro @palasr @dwette @jcarr @mulveling 

Thanks everyone for your responses. They have been very helpful.