Teach me about cartridge 'retipping'

Okay, I stumbled across my name being mentioned so I signed up.  I just want to say a few things as a retipper.  First of all, it's not for everyone.  Chakster's mind is clearly made up about the subject and he takes a dim view.  There are a lot of assumptions to what he says, namely strict uniformity and perfection to be found with any factory made cartridge as well as zero error and perfect tolerance.  The basis of his reservations go like this: Every single cartridge ever made by any manufacturer is perfectly thought out and engineered to the highest degree of precision.  Any change to this formula is a degradation.  Okay.  We get it.  Makes sense.  Now, to poke some holes.

Chakster himself says to buy a slew of the same model of cartridge to get an idea of what the cartridge is supposed to sound like.  Hidden in this advice is Chakster's own observation that many individual examples of the same exact model of cartridge are going to sound different from each other even though they use all the same parts, are built by the same people and must have the same degree of quality in their construction which is higher quality than any retipper can provide. 

But if this is the case, then how does one explain why these cartridges that should all be uniformly exactly the same and perfect sound so different from each other?

Next assumption: Cartridge manufacturers use exclusive parts that are available only to them.  This is partially true.  I have never been able to get the gold plated tapered boron cantilever that Audio-Technica offers except by purchasing an Audio-Techica stylus at retail. 

No one else to my knowledge uses anything but off the shelf stock production items by the cantilever/diamond manufacturers with the exception that Lyra uses a 3/70 micron Ogura diamond on many of their cartridges, which is a diamond formula that is contractually exclusive to Lyra.  I can't buy them from Ogura without causing Ogura to violate their exclusive contract with Lyra in other words.

But are the diamonds really 3/70 in every case?  Consider that most diamonds, if you read the QC reports when you order them, shows that there is a lot of variation when you order.  If I were to order 4/70 from Ogura, which would not violate the exclusive contract with Lyra, then I would probably end up with a couple of 3/70.  But who would know?  I wouldn't. 

The Audio-Technica MicroLine is no different than the Namiki Micro Ridge except that it could be that those Micro Ridge that come out of production conforming to a 2.5/75 whatever it is dimension will be shipped to A-T but all the rest will be sold as Micro Ridge.  So if a 3/80 comes out, it's a Micro Ridge.  If a 2.5/75 comes out, it's a MicroLine.  But what about a 2.5/80?  The reality is that these are tiny tiny objects produce to tolerance like anything else and they aren't all the same and I could get some that are close enough to original that you wouldn't know the difference.

Retippers don't consider the spirit and identity of a cartridge: Jonathan Carr says supposedly, "In over 30 years of involvement in the phono cartridge industry, I have not seen one retipper who has presented the entire story, who has effectively said "Here are the all of the considerations. Here are the cons as well as the pros. Make a wise choice that is best for you" ... " (J.Carr, 2013)"  Look at Sound Smith's page.  Perhaps Jonathan has never seen it, but it was there in 2013.  Retippers like Peter will tell you more about the truth of cartridges than cartridge manufacturers ever will.  Cartridge manufacturers want you to think that much of what they do is exclusive, but it's an industry like anything else and there are suppliers.  Just like with cars of all different makes and models all riding on the same tires, or starting with the same Bosch starter, most cartridges use parts sourced by the same suppliers.  There are five that I know of that supply to the manufacturing industry.  Ogura, Namiki, Gyger, Synton and Nagaoka.  That's it.  Synton in Switzerland makes all the bonded diamonds--pretty sure on that.  They also now make the black nude diamonds.  Some speculation exists that Jico has a Japanese source for bonded diamonds, but I haven't found the evidence other than they do offer bonded line contacts, a source of which I have not been able to uncover.  But it could also be that they purchased supplies for decades and stockpiled and so will have them for decades to come even if none have been manufactured in many years.  A million bonded diamond tips can fit into a box the size of a cigarette pack.  

Glue on the tip: All manufacturers use glue.  The very idea that there is no glue holding a diamond into place on any cantilever assembly save the solid diamond/stylus feat of engineering by Yamaha or Sony whoever it was is just not the case.  Manufacturers often use less glue than a retipper will, but manufacturers will also turn their backs on you if a diamond falls off, and they do fall off.  A retipper wants to make sure the diamond stays on and a retipper knows that the extra epoxy is of such low mass that it's not going to affect the ETM in any meaningful way.  What might affect it is that the length of the diamonds sold as bare replacement diamonds are often longer than the originals--at least with Ogura.  Typical diamond for Ogura in a boron prong fitting is about .5mm whereas the loose diamonds are .6 to .7.  This makes the glue blob look bigger.  Ogura can supply them shorter, but if it ever were to become an issue, which it hasn't, then maybe I would insist.

Namiki uses wads of glue to hold their Micro Ridge onto a boron cantilever.  So do retippers.  The diamond itself is so small that the glue is negligible.  If under testing I were ever to notice tracing issues, then I would use less glue.  But the only stylus that is really fussy about keeping things extremely low mass is a Pickering or Stanton stylus.  These really need someone who can work to the absolutely lowest mass repair possibly or you will have sibilance.  This is why the aftermarket styli are often not so great.

In order to keep a half size diamond butt jointed onto a boron or sapphire cantilever, I have developed a six stage process that has taken me much trial and error to perfect.  I get maybe 1 in 50 returned to me for falling off.  That's better than the manufacturer's record.  I'll keep doing what I'm doing, then.

I take enormous pride in my work.  I really enjoy retipping and getting cartridges to work again. I can go on and on and on on this topic, but I only wanted to address a few points since I was sort of summoned and I have read chakster's opinions a number of times and I just wanted to respond to some of them.  They are the kinds of arguments that are made when someone insists on a type of perfection that simply does not exist in this world, even by their own observations which they choose to simply ignore.

Design and build process: I touched on this earlier.  There are as many ways to build a cartridge as there are cartridge manufacturers.  The evidence I see over and over again is that there are fewer parts than manufacturers.  Most manufacturers don't make their own dampers, I suspect.  They certainly do not make their own wire for the tie wires or the wire for their moving coils.  They do not make their own magnets.  The don't make their own aluminum tubing.  They certainly do not make their own diamonds.  What's left to make?

Like anything, many cartridge engineers I would say are like those in any industry.  They specify parts made from a certain very limited array of materials over and over again.  You can have a damper made from about four different formulations of rubber, all by the same precision rubber manufacturer.  Ortofon might make their own dampers.  Audio-Technica probably makes their own unique moving coil assembly.  Most other manufacturers probably buy them from Excel or somewhere else, but there's not a lot of competition there.  So as much as some people imagine that cartridge engineers have access to an unlimited palette of materials from which to specify, there are many aspects to the design of cartridges that come down to a process that is more like any other industry.  If I'm designing plumbing, I can have this pipe or that pipe, but I'm not going to actually have pipe designed from scratch for me.  It's the same with cantilevers, dampers, magnets, etc.  Of course there are exceptions.  Koetsu is the only manufacturer supposedly to have access to the manufacture of platinum magnets.  Okay, well  most retippers don't need platinum magnets anyway because they aren't replacing Koetsu magnets.

And I can buy my own parts too.  I have wire, I have tension wire, I have rubber dampers, magnets, cantilever tubing, diamonds, etc.  I will even have my own sapphire and ruby rods in .28 mm soon to which I will install my own diamonds.  I even have diamonds no one else has because I found old stashes of stock from defunct manufacturers and stockpiled whatever I could and I am always looking for more.  A good retipper can take your cartridge to the next level, just like a good mechanic can improve your car even if he doesn't use the exact same parts to repair your car that the dealer uses.

Speaking as a retipper, I can only offer that I endeavor always to do the best work I can.  Whether it is attaching a new Micro Ridge diamond onto the chipped end of a diamond cantilever on a Koetsu Coralstone Platinum or installing a bonded elliptical diamond factory mounted to a standard aluminum cantilever on a Denon DL-110, you get the same level of craftsmanship from me.  I know that audiophiles don't like to see much glue at all and so I keep the glue as limited in amount as I feel that I can possibly get away with without risking creating a faulty repair.  After all, I want my customer to be happy with the visual appearance of my work even if in my mind and experience, you can't hear the cement.  And I certainly don't want the diamond to fall off the cartridge when it's back with the customer, maybe somewhere halfway across the globe from here.

Retipping allows people to enjoy favorite cartridges again.  It allows people to upgrade them if they want to, and also allows them to downgrade them if they need to.  If it weren't a valuable service, I wouldn't be here.  It allows me to allow people to experience cartridges they probably never would have been able to otherwise.  The Micro Acoustics range of piezo cartridges is a great example.  User replaceable styli for these have dried up.  Without retippers, the opportunity to experience a beryllium cantilever on a piezo cartridge would simply continue to disappear.

Suspension wear and age: well overstated.  I have retipped probably thousands of cartridges by now, many of them decades old.  There are a few examples of particular models with known issues (Shure V15 Type IV is a big one), and some others to a lesser degree, but otherwise, suspension rubbers are basically stable.  Some have fragile suspensions that will likely break if the cantilever is ever broken, like the Denon DL301 MKII and almost any Audio-Technica, and others just go soft over time like some Yamahas whose suspension donut simply liquifies and actually evaporates.  Supex SD901 Super (but not the SD900 Super or any other Supex in my experience, all of which are extremely stable) just turns to goop most of the time. Storage conditions are more of a predictor of whether a suspension will be bad.  But most people will store a broken cartridge in a dark, cool environment away from moisture, like the sock drawer, as a matter of instinct.

In the end, going with a retipper is a personal decision.  Some people will always advise never to use a retipper or to buy a retipped cartridge.  Okay, fair enough.  Perhaps they had a bad experience with retipping.  It happens.  A bad retipping experience got me started in this trade, so I actually have bad retipping to thank, ironically enough. 

But many would advise it and do advise it based on positive experience because it can be extremely positive and should be.

Okay, that's it for me.  I chimed in a lot more than I had planned to and I could have a lot more to say, but I'll just end here.