I feel the same about re-tipping and refurbishing, even after cartridge designers like J.Carr explained why it's a bad idea, some people still think that re-tippers in their garage are smarter than cartridge designers. We're in minority on this forum, the majority of people are happy about re-tipping with completely different diamonds/cantilevers. They are happy to pay extra money to convert clever design to some frankenstein, because re-tipper said it will be even better. One of the reason, in my opinion, is that only a few people can actually compare original sample to refurbished sample, in this case they must have both cartridges on hands, but after 5 month they can't even remember the sound of their ex original cartridge. And re-tipper will say that it must be better after burn-in (100 hrs). To my surprise many people are happy to deal with less known and less qualified re-tippers they are often advertise on this forum after the job is done. I think some audiophiles does not have enough cartridges, they want to stick to one or two and happy to re-tip them many times (instead of finding something new/better).
Chakster
Have to agree with you here, as aural memory is very fickle and you certainly cannot remember exactly how that cart you sent for a retip sounded at its best, an idea sure but not exact.
All one has to do is look at the number of carts you see listed that say" just retipped, very few hours".
Says it all really.
Now I did use the services of VAS to REPAIR my Koetsu simply because it had gone open on one channel, this does not alter its character but was well worth $400 to have it back to 2 channel performance instead of left channel only.... lol.
This is a totally different type of repair work.
