Soundsmith's turnaround time?

Tpreaves, This is certainly true. However IMO it is most important to know that Soundsmith is a clean and straight and reasonably priced service and that the customer is eventually satisfied. One occasionally encounters shady operators in audio, and Soundsmith is not one of these.

Al, mine was finished at 7 mos. after many fruitless queries. The cartridge was finished the day after I requested return of the cartridge finished or unfinished. The work was good, but obviously it is possible to get buried in the backlog. Reading remarks of other posters who obtained much faster service during the period that my cartridge was there, I am led to conclude that they do not operate on a first-come first-serve basis. Peter performs a valuable & honest service but one must be prepared for a much longer than advertized wait.

FWIW, Peter put his best "optimized line-contact diamond" on the stock boron cantilever of my Lyra Helikon. To the best of my recollection the cartridge sounds better than new. It looks quite different from the stock Lyra LC tip. However with this one you do need to take special care with azimuth.