Broken cantilever Need options...


Hello All,

I am a recently entrant to the dark side, I had suspected that I would be initiated at some point. Well, that point in time came last night. As I attempted to put the stylus guard on my Clearaudio Concerto, I heard a tiny snap. Yep, you guessed it, cantilever broke clean off. Can't find it anywhere in my berber carpeting.:tears:

Well, I chose to sleep it off rather than stew in it, and when I woke up this morning to research my options, I quickly learned that I just became a member of a very large and anything-but-exclusive club. I bought the cart used as part of a bundled package. So far, I understand my options to be as such:

1) Buy a new one ($2,750 MSRP);

2) Send to retailer for re-tipping. $1,500 option for online retailers that I've checked;

3) Send to retailer for trade-in. Haven't gotten a price yet, but I'm guessing that will be more than the re-tipping will cost;

4) Send to Soundsmith for re-tipping. Probably between $300-$450, but obviously not OEM;

5) Sell cartridge as is.

I'm open to any other suggestions. Dark side, indeed!
asindc

Showing 3 responses by tanathen78

While I'm not familiar at all with his prices , I'm pretty sure that van den hul uses boron for cantilevers, the same material you had. It might be worth giving him a call , his work certainly speaks for itself as well. Just another option to try. Soundsmith is the first name that came to my mind too though.
Actually , I downloaded the faq pdf recently from vdh's site where he answered quite a few questions, many having to do with broken cartridges. He also spoke of the material he prefers to use, boron being his first choice for cantilevers. As far as calling him goes, if "he" can't be reached "them" by extension ( as a company or dealer of vdh) would most certainly be implied. Pricing wasn't mentioned in the 120 or so question I did read; however thank you for taking the time out of your mundane life to waste mine though.
So getting a cartridge repaired by vdh himself is more than likely not remotely possible, he charges a premium to use his name and the work is likely less than adequate for the price payed. Is that the general idea? My apologies for being ignorant of all this, I was trying to help