Soundsmith's turnaround time?

I've got an older wood bodied Benz called the MO.9 It has a boron cantiliever and a nude elliptical stylus. I'd like to send it to Soundsmith to be refurbished but not sure of which service to use.

Do you think I should stay with the elliptical or go with one of the line contacts? I don't mind paying either the $250 or $350 fee if it means it will be substantially better.

Any recommendations?

This will be mounted on a Naim ARO tone arm, in case that matters at all.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me.

Hello Raul,

Thank you for your reply.

Yes, I do like how the Benz MO.9 sounded when it was new very much. However, I notice that the newer wood bodied Benz's have switched to the line contact stylus instead of the eliptical stylus. I'm sure that this has changed the sound, but does that really mean it's better? I don't know.

I understand that switching to the Ruby cantiliever and line contact stylus would change the sound from how it originally was, but I do not know how it would change. Do you have any idea of how the character of the sound would change? What it's sonic attributes may be?

In stock form, I felt that the cartridge sounded very balanced from top to bottom, not highlighting any one area of the frequency. It had detail, but not "hyper-detail". It had warmth, but not bloated. It's dynamics sounded natural to me, not exagerated. I wonder how this all would change if the cantiliever was changed from boron to ruby, and the stylus from eliptical to line contact?

I guess if there is no way of knowing, then to be safe I should ask Soundsmith to retip as close to the original as possible, as you have suggested.

Thank you for your comments.
No Regrets

Thank you Raul, Undertow, Dgarretson, and Dan_ed for all of your very thoughtful replies. You all have given me much to think about.

Does anyone happen to have either Soundsmith's phone number and/or email address that you could share with me. I just tried to get onto their website and for some reason, my computer isn't letting me. Unfortunately, I am not very computer savy.

Thanks to all for your help and sharing your thoughts with me.

No Regrets

Thank you Dan_ed for your assistance. It is greatly appreciated!

No Regrets

For some reason, my computer still won't let me get onto their website. I remeber they had a $250 option and a $350 option, but I can't remember what the differences are between the two.

Does anyone know what the differences are and if it would be worth going for the $350 option?

Thank you for your help and sharing any experiences that you might have.

Hi Raul,

Thank you for the email addresses.