Refurbished / Re-tipped Cartridges - Are they worth Buying?

Neither Ortofon, nor Soundsmith manufactures their own stylus/cantilever assemblies, cactus excepted. The birds nest adhesive is typical of Orbray (formerly Namiki) mounts on boron stylii. https://orbray.com/en/product/jewel/product/onlineshop_record.html

Both Ogura and Geiger have a cleaner look to their boron mounts. The cultured crystal cantilevers are through hole laser drilled.

Mijo, I was under the impression that these re-tippers buy their cantilevers with various styli pre-mounted, for installation on our various cartridges. In other words, I would not have thought the amount of fastener and its placement are choices made at SS. Now, if you ask them to replace only the stylus while preserving the original cantilever (my preference when possible), then yes, SS (or any other retipper)  must orient the stylus and apply the fastener. In the case of my Grace Ruby, I had both the cantilever and stylus replaced, because I bought the cartridge sans any cantilever at all (which made it very cheap, of course). Like I think I said, although the amount of "glue" is disconcerting to look at under my ’scope, the resulting cartridge handily outperforms my other Grace Ruby, which still bears its original cantilever and (elliptical) stylus. What I am probably hearing is the difference between a new OCL stylus and a used elliptical stylus.

The topic of the gob of glue surrounding Namiki/Orbray cantilevers and others comes up pretty often. Clients send me “What’s that?????!!!!!” photos with disparaging remarks about retipping rather often, having no idea that the brand new cartridges are the exact same.

My take on this is that major manufacturers use this method along with half height low profile diamonds typically 0.3mm tall while a standard pass-through stylus diamond length is 0.6mm. Reasonably assume that the epoxy, which is perfectly rigid and forms an excellent bond together with a low profile diamond is lighter than a full length diamond installed/mortised into a slot or hole in a boron or gem cantilever. If the epoxy does not interfere with the contact edges of the stone, the lighter assembly is the better one.

A stronger joint is of course better for sound, but I don’t know if the glue joint is stronger or weaker than a mechanical joint. Some evidence is that it’s weaker because the glued diamonds fall out when exposed to a knock whereas the mechanical ones break the cantilever—at least with boron. With sapphire or ruby, it could go either way.

In any case, from my perspective, I think it’s an advantage if a diamond pops off leaving a cantilever intact because then all I have to do is replace the diamond like with like and go about my life. A broken cantilever is a chore to repair and exposes the naked cartridge to the risk of damage while being repaired. I’ve never damaged one yet, but replacing a diamond alone is a lot easier on the nerves.

Needlestein, aka Groovetickler

If your cartridge costs $500 (like the legendary and wonderful Denon 103R) then you can afford to replace it once the stylus is worn. But if you have a really expensive cartridge ($5K) then it pays to have it re-tipped. I had Groovetickler retip my expensive cartridge, and I also had my inexpensive AT33MONO cartridge upgraded with a boron/micro ridge stylus which put this on par with mono cartridges costing 3x as much. 

What is overlooked in many discussions had about retip/refurbishment/rebuild of a Cart', is that OEM Services and Third Party Services are seen to choose the wording in their descriptions where ' Equivalent ' is the key word. A term 'Identical' or 'Like for Like' is not used.

' Equivalent ' in relation to parts selected to be used, can have an extremely broad interpretation of what these parts are? Across the different services being used, it is likely to be very inconsistent in what is to offered.

I recollect, I believe from a  Thread started by 'nandric', that Lyra made it known they have a Cart' Model that is always available to be rebuilt to the identical OEM Model that was produced?

I have experiences of original with varying usage hours vs modified vs rebuilt of same Cart' models. I enjoyed the experiences undertaken and especially the findings/evaluations.