Cartridge burn-in

The bloody hard thing is to know when to dismiss a cartridge as...err...not what you wanted. I can agree that they continue to change for up to 100 hours. Most of the change will be heard in the first 20 hours. But if there are cartridges that are absolute shitgibbons before 100 hours, and become angelic world-beaters after 100 hours most of us will never appreciate them. Makers of such esoteric cartridges ought to run them in before sale, don't you think?

Makers of such esoteric cartridges ought to run them in before sale, don't you think?

Which brings up another question: if indeed cartridges need break-in, why don't manufacturers perform that break-in when the cartridge gets assembled? Doing that would minimize the hassle of handling return items from people who get disappointed when listening to their new purchase. You know what they say -- you have only one chance to make the first impression.

Doing the break-in before they ship the cartridge shouldn't be a big deal for the manufacturers, no? So, why aren't they considering doing it?

While I am a firm believer in "breaking in" most new gear, it is hard to quantify. It's hard to know how much of it is the gear itself changing character over time and your own ears becoming accustomed to what it's hearing and also not hearing. That being said, the two cartridges that I have had that used shibata styluses definitely felt thin and less dynamic until I played through them for a while.  

I took a rebuilt Cart' to a friend, to use in their system and compare to their owned Cart'.

My friends Cart' was with a decent period of usage hours and was a model that was from the upper range of what the Brand offers.

My own Cart's was a lower down the range model but bespoke produced through a rebuild.

The interest was to see where these two Cart's were in comparison to each other.

I distinctly recollect the first visit with 20+ hours of usage on my owned model, the Bass was not quite gathered and not quite able to create a perception of believable envelope for notes from the lower frequencies.

At a visit with about 150ish hours of usage, my Cart' was to my assessment a much-improved performer in the Bass region and a very good comparison to the friends Cart'. I also distinctly recollect upper mid and top frequencies were projected further and detail retrieval from the Groove was more evident.

I was not wanting much more and was not pining for anything else that been heard during the demonstrations. 

Improvement was expected to be discovered after a period of Break In, that was the general overview, and not too different from contributions from other posts within this thread. 

Improvement was discovered to be occurring, but the unexpected was for it to become an improvement to the point it compared very favourably to another rated model, this was not anticipated to end up as such a close call. 

To get to this point, it was only important to use the Cartridge in a very careful manner. 

Reason why manufacturers might not want to do "break-in" in advance of sale:  Because, in my experience, no cartridge is happy just sitting around, whether as a freshly built virgin in a sealed gift box or on the end of a tonearm.  In both cases, the suspension, which has either never been worked or has stiffened up from lack of use, benefits from use, which is why I recommend playing a suitable test LP in advance of a serious listening session, if the cartridge was not in regular use prior to the session and especially if the cartridge is brand new.  I specifically recommend the Cardas test LP, but there certainly may be others suitable to the job.  Sometimes I don't have the patience to use the Cardas LP in advance of a listening session.  In those cases, one can easily hear that the cartridge gets much happier after 20-30 minutes, if you are intimately familiar with the system and the SQ of the cartridge.