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.