It’s funny to see our Mexican posts when he’s contradict with himself.
Once he told us that only Ortofon can do the job to refurbish Ortofon cartridges, because they are so special and have an access to their own exclussively made materials, now he said that for another cartridge brands it does not matter. What a BS! This is typical double standards!
If anyone would like to re-cantilever VdH cartridge not by Mr.VdH himself, but at VAS or at Kim then it’s a downgrade for sure. Much lower price, but a downgrade in quality. This rule is the same for all ultra high-end cartridges from well known designers.
You want to believe that all the cartridges must be send to SoundSmith or whatever retipper for an "upgrade" ?? Mystically 99% of the owners yelling "my cartridge is better than the original", but only a few can actually compare an original cartridge and another refurbished sample not by faulty memories, but in real time. We often see a refurbished cartridges for sale for some reason.
It also make me laugh when audiophiles claiming they are able to hear a tiny the difference in VTA or VTF or micron difference in cartridge alignment, or even a f*****g fuse (omg), but not able to hear an entirely different cantilever/stylus mounted by some third-party vendor on a bench at his garage on some ultra high-end cartridge from world famous cartridge designer who used exclussive parts for his cart, voiced and tuned accordingly after a years of try and errors.
Read an old J.Carr’s comment and learn a bit:
Changing only the stylus will alter the sound less than if the cantilever material is changed. When a cartridge is designed, the designer will consider the moving mass (sum of the stylus, cantilever and coils), the resonant character of the cantilever, and the (sonic) propagation velocity of the cantilever (affected by the cantilever’s mass and rigidity), then choose the suspension and dampers accordingly. If you change the cantilever material, you are effectively throwing the original designer’s calculations away.
There is much more (far more than what I have written above) to rebuilding a cartridge than affixing a new stylus or altering the cantilever. 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".
To retip a cartridge that was originally equipped with a stylus made by one manufacturer with one made by a different manufacturer is like rebuilding a Porsche engine with Jaguar pistons and crankshaft - the components used for rebuilding may be of high quality, but the design philosophy is rather different from the original.
