301oil, did you send your EMT cartridge back to Switzerland to have it refurbished? My online dealer gives a 20% discount for trade-in. I wonder if that would be just as good a deal, since I don't have to pay shipping both ways. Thanks.
When to change a cartridge?
I currently own an EMT HD006 cartridge that cost about $1900. That's as much as I've ever paid for a cartridge. Previously I was in thousand-dollar territory. I can't imagine spending $5K for something that's assured to wear out. I play my turntable (VPI Prime Signature 21) every day for at least a few hourse. I guage that I put about a thousand hours a year on my cartridge, which is now at about 1500 hours.
I have read forums in which people talk about putting their cartridge under a microscope every few months. I don't own a microscope and I wouldn't know what to look for if I did. After reading forums in which people talk about cartridges wearing out before the manufacturer's recommended hours, I began to hear my cartridge slowly declining. I thought perhaps the attacks weren't as crisp.
I called my online dealer to discuss replacing mine, telling him that I thought I heard deterioration in the cartridge's sound. He said it doesn't work that way. I will know when my cartridge is ready to be changed. It will not be subtle. Often the suspension collapses.
My reaction was that a dealer wouldn't talk me out of spending about $2K unless that expense was foolish. So, I am still playing my EMT HD006 and not worrying about subtle changes as it wears down. The dealer said it might be fine for up to 3,000 hours.
I'm curious to know what other people do about their cartridges. Wait for the suspension to collapse and the thing sounds terrible, or monitor it more closely and perhaps even change the cartridge before the manufacturer's recommendation?
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The guy at Phono Cartridge Retipping, a retipping place suggested by mofimadness, said that he would retip my EMT which has a "super fine line" stylus with a "medium fine line" stylus. He said, however, that the word "super" is subjective and his "medium" fine line would be better than what EMT calls a "super" fine line cartridge. Any comments? |
Inna said: "Bill, that’s quite a set up that you have. What would it take to go even higher ?" @inna - I don’t know. I’m not focused on that aspect at this point. I’m actually sitting here enjoying listening. And shocker, the digital front end (inexpensive stuff largely from China) running hi-res through an I2S connection with a DDC sounds really good. So much so that I’d say if I hadn’t the long history with LPs, I don’t know that I’d even bother with the vinyl format if I were starting from scratch today. Of course, I’m not starting now, so that’s a rhetorical observation, but I’d imagine people who work on their digital front ends and put some serious effort into getting them right are probably getting great results, given how little I’ve spent and how little I know on the digital processing front. I have a few other interests I pursue as well, though audio + music + the music biz/copyright law has been almost a lifetime for me, say since I was 16. (I started studying music at age 5 but was made to do so and hated it--it took me til I was a teen to "get it" and start composing though I never tried to make any money making music). It’s not going away, but my perspective about it all is much more relaxed these days. It’s like waking up and discovering you did all this stuff deep into the hobby and now, as an idiot, I can just be blissful. (I don’t think I’m losing my mind, my judgement is good, my health is good, but I’m now 71 and want to enjoy life after working since I was a kid). In some ways, I’m still learning, but my focus is different if that makes sense. Sorry for the ramble. |
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