5-6 weeks of play about 40 hours can make some difference. I couldn't wait and recorded an album onto my Nakamichi Dragon right after I got my new Benz S cartridge. A month later I rerecorded it over just because I read about cartridge break in and wanted my recording to be the best. Well I accidently failed to record over first 15 seconds and when I played tape back there was a noticeable difference in the bass from the first 15 seconds. It had tightened up. The song started with bass drums so I didn't have any high frequencies to compare. I hadn't changed the bias or record settings because there had been no other tapes recorded. The only other thing that might could matter is the warm up time on the Dragon. I don't know if it was the same on the 2 recordings. Some Audiogoners could repeat this chance experiment and post their results. The song was Helena Beat by Foster the People.
