I tip only for exceptional service.
Teach me about cartridge 'retipping'
Thought I would throw this out there for comment by long time vinyl aficionados...
We all have cartridges we love, some are pricey treasures... but they wear out eventually even with much care and diligence in use.
There are still some good folks with excellent reputations doing retip services of various makes - Peter at SS, Andy Kim in WA, Steve Leung in NJ etc etc... not to mention some of the manufacturers of course, who still do them. It would seem to me these old craftsmen may or may not be passing along these valuable skills to younger apprentices.
I have bought a couple Grace F9 retips from Peter Ledermann - they work wonderfully. No longer having a fresh factory F9L I will never know whether they sound different. But they sound great.
Curious to hear comments about how these retips are done, and whether they can reliably reproduce the original sound signature of the cartridge. I wonder, for instance, about how the cantilever is removed and reinstalled, relative to the suspension of the original cartridge, etc etc. Is the suspension replaced? What is a suspension comprised of, for example, in a typical higher end MC cart like a Dynavector a Lyra a VDH...
Of course, as time passes, the original cartridges age and I can imagine suspensions in them eventually get compromised as well...
We all have cartridges we love, some are pricey treasures... but they wear out eventually even with much care and diligence in use.
There are still some good folks with excellent reputations doing retip services of various makes - Peter at SS, Andy Kim in WA, Steve Leung in NJ etc etc... not to mention some of the manufacturers of course, who still do them. It would seem to me these old craftsmen may or may not be passing along these valuable skills to younger apprentices.
I have bought a couple Grace F9 retips from Peter Ledermann - they work wonderfully. No longer having a fresh factory F9L I will never know whether they sound different. But they sound great.
Curious to hear comments about how these retips are done, and whether they can reliably reproduce the original sound signature of the cartridge. I wonder, for instance, about how the cantilever is removed and reinstalled, relative to the suspension of the original cartridge, etc etc. Is the suspension replaced? What is a suspension comprised of, for example, in a typical higher end MC cart like a Dynavector a Lyra a VDH...
Of course, as time passes, the original cartridges age and I can imagine suspensions in them eventually get compromised as well...
Showing 3 responses by millercarbon
I have bought a couple Grace F9 retips from Peter Ledermann - they work wonderfully. Your actual experience then is quite good. Yet we have pictures trying to create the impression that because there's a lot of glue it must be a sloppy job. At least that seems to be the impression. Always hard to tell with innuendo. Ledermann has a whole career built on developing and improving phono cartridges. If you want to learn about cartridges you could do worse than to watch the videos he has up on Soundsmith and YT. Here for example is a fascinating discussion of jitter, (vibration and resonance in all the different parts of a cartridge) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmwnN_T_wW8 Just the first few minutes should be enough to understand anyone posting pictures of glue is probably missing the big picture. Tracking a record groove sets in motion a complex pattern of vibrations in every part of the cartridge. The first point of vibration is the stylus itself. One might think its the stylus/cantilever attachment point. That seems to be the reason for the pictures. If so its misleading. The stylus itself is very small but the tip of the stylus, the actual contact area, is microscopic. The stylus itself is bound to vibrate. The better the stylus is supported above the contact point the less of the stylus there is to wobble and flex around. Now look at those photo's again. It would be super easy to put a blob of glue on there and stick the stylus into it. If that's what it was I'd be appalled. But instead what we see is glue perfectly applied in a smooth curve from as low on the stylus as it can go to as far out on the cantilever. https://www.sound-smith.com/sites/default/files/BO-CL1a.jpg This can't be by accident. Can't prove it, but watch a lot of Ledermann, try and tell yourself this was an accident. Try and tell yourself its anything other than Ledermann building a bunch of these things and figuring out by trial and error this is better than OEM. Compare that now to OEM. https://scontent-arn2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/119490585_4737129112971885_4613339876402529386_o.jpg?_... Notice that not only is the stylus itself not supported very close to the contact area, but the whole thing is projecting out much further from the cantilever. That's a big drawback, because the further it projects out the more mechanical leverage it has to put torque into the cantilever. This would explain why your experience was, "They work wonderfully". Watch a bunch of his videos. There's a lot to learn. If you're impatient, or just want a terrific teaser how good his jitter video is https://youtu.be/WmwnN_T_wW8?t=1220 |