Teach me about cartridge 'retipping'

One can also re-tip by buying pre-made assemblies, from Adamant Namiki.

I get your point, though (chakster).
The nude mounted styli on our cartridges is a namiki aluminum unit. (elliptical, shibata, or micro-ridge. Micro-ridge being akin to micro-line)

Chakster,

The other important point to ponder is: not all things are known about how to upgrade a cartridge, nor is all lore and intelligence applied available only to the makers of the past.

New things or new ideas do show up in the now, not just in the past. New thinking can create new advantage, in newer products. It’s not just a rehashing of the old, with a set of now limited resources, all downturn...as you are saying.

As in, all is not lost.

Eg, if I come up with a new understanding and then apply it on a current build or design, there is as a chance or opportunity.. that it may exceed some of the cartridges of old, in some given important ways. Ways that people can clearly hear.

It’s not all about a downturn and forgetting our history, and losing the lore and physical devices, etc...in the mists of time.

Advantage and change and elevation from the old can come from different directions. (delineated specific ways, of course, not some nebulous nonspecific overall)

So, if i say I’ve taken a current design and made changes that elevate it from what is currently at the peak of lets say MM design (that is current manufacture), there is no real credible reason to doubt that to the point of outright dismissal, especially if one has not listened to it.

To say such a thing would be disingenuous and misleading for all the wrong reasons, and none of the right ones. It would ruin the logic of your position by being a falsifiable position. Falsifiable via listening, possibly... but immediately falsifiable by logic alone.

New thinking and new application of said new thinking can/may/might elevate to new levels, it can/may/might make the current deficits less of a problem....if done correctly.

In effect, If someone comes along and is doing their best to take current design to a new level and reclaim some of the older lost ground and quality levels, in some way... where.. if you sit there and say, as a response... "it's no good compared to what used to be available, and that one must try to only buy the very limited number of old NOS cartridges in order to get to the best", well, that's just disingenuous and damaging to the potential of the now, and the future. 

It can be interpreted by some, as saying 'only older things are good, all your new stuff is junk'. To judge without reason, in some small to possibly major way, depending on how it is voiced. I personally don't think that is your intent, but it seems to be sounding to any reader as being that way.

I’ve already revolutionized conductor design by using liquid metal conductors which are, literally, purely a quantum beast. Not seen before anywhere, in anything. so new, it is not yet explored and can produce effects and conditions not yet realized.

For example, if making an inductor out of it, things get bizarre and don’t follow the expected rules.

There’s a thousand new patents and ideas hiding in there, yet people are clueless to the potential that is openly displayed and freely given.

(As an aside, a critical one...the US military made gaseous antenna system for their tanks in the 1990's. the gaseous antennas have no direction limits,  no frequency limits, and no multiplexing limits.It  disappeared. It disappeared into black ops, black budgets. One of untold thousands like it. Stolen from our collective human future.

This one, liquid metal as conductor ..has similar aspects to it. Think of it as a heavy mass gas.

As... I did it openly, into an ignorant world, and it managed to stay out in the open. For almost 15 years, so far.)

Where ignorance tries to beat me to death in the streets for being a charlatan. Such insanity and projections.


I’’m selling a $229 cartridge, with a return policy, if people don’t like it. It has some new ideas in it.

Just to get started.

It has to start small and pay for itself, as no one in their right mind, would create $500 MM phono cartridges by spending $10 million to get there. Just so a few people with influential opinions about sound quality.. could pass judgement on it ...and make or break the $10 million effort. That would be insanity.

No one, in this market, is going to do that for you. They’ll never recover their investment.

So it has to start small and pay for itself, as it goes...IF it gets the chance to go, at all.

I don’t have to prove anything to anyone, the return policy says it all.

IF I want my effort to take it further, then all you are going to be receiving at this time, is getting a chance to purchase it. You will not be getting the information, or thinking on why it’s an improvement. As that, is the ’thousand free patents’ end of the ideas and thinking pool. Stolen thunder. I don’t owe you that. No one does.

As that that would kill the effort before it begins. All that would happen is theft and loss of my chance to begin and take it somewhere better and greater. Intellectual property theft is a big problem for the start of any enterprise.

Chakster is right, though. Answers about quality and capacity to recognize quality, must be qualified.

the old analog crew with the greatest level of knowledge and lore, is pretty well gone.

and there are people celebrating their new carts as being newly re-tipped. Good on them.

But does the re-tipped cartridge exceed the original version, from back in the day?

that is a giant unknown.

If someone who was enjoying a re-tip were to explain their background in cartridges and analog experiences... and what they look for in a cartridge and how they hear... then maybe we could qualify and quantify their opinion.

Professional reviewers are that person, in most cases. Someone whom we have a reference point for.

A disturbing amount of mediocrity in audio is touted as being the best. 

There is a reason for that. It's a bell curve, the middle is fat and thinks it represents all that there is.

The middle could not be more wrong.

It is a smaller number of examples, but the same still happens in the rest of the audio world. A reality we face. One that is inevitably endemic to the newly more common aspect of cartridge re-tipping.