Replicant 100 stylus

The Replicant styli are made in Ireland.

They obviously started their ’’repair service’’ in UK but moved to Australia hoping for more success. In this sense they were his competitors so he refused to provide them with his PARATRACE styli.

Unfortunately the audio forums are full of bs.

John & Brian Garrott were as Australian as Pavlova and Marmite. They were born in Tasmania.

They were in the UK briefly on holiday in 1967 and although they rebuilt cartridges as a hobby, they were never in business in the UK.

Up until the early 70’s John was an Accountant and Brian was a Pharmacist. They started their cartridge business later in their home country of Australia in the mid to late 1970’s. They were never in business in the UK.

dover, imagine me being your visitor in N, Zeeland and you offering

to me only an half glass of your excellent wine. That is how I feel with

your info about origin of Replicant .

Yes that is correct.

Some our New Zealand red wines are world class. Unless you decant them, best to serve half a glass to maximise the surface area and let it aerate.

Of course if I was serving you a cheap Dalmation Red, then indeed I would give you a full glass, on the basis that by the third or fourth glass it might be more palatable.

I have next to my Russian- also an American brother with whom I

have daily correspondence (Don Griffith). His story you can probably

deny or confirm. The story is that people posted their in Japan bought

Koetsus direct to Garrott brothers for their ''retips''. Aka ''not rebuild''

or ''refreshment''. 

I know for sure what the Garrott Bros did to Koetsu's. I sent them somewhere between 30-40 Koetsu's personally in the mid 80's.

The Garrott's tweaked Koetsu's were so good that we occasionally had customers request a "Garrott retip" for their brand new Koetsu. 

Part of the reason was the micro scanner styli they installed.

However, this was only part of the story. With each retip the Garrotts went through each cartridge from stylus tip to pin outs. Any issues were tidied up. Production flaws fixed. Sometimes they reworked what they considered to be design flaws.

This is true of all cartridges the Garrots retipped. Every retip, repaired cartridge was fully tested in a live system before leaving their premises.

As far as Koetsu's go I can tell you Garrotts considered them the worst built cartridges in the world. For example  with the stone bodied Koetsu's built by Sugano, the generator/cantilever/stylus assembly were held in by paper shims. We actually had a couple of Onyx Gold where the guts literally fell out of the cartridge body. The Garrott's would remove the paper shims and rework the mechanical integrity of the cartridge.

There were other internal mods they did, but they kept most of the details to themselves.

It was this attention to detail that their reputation for delivering cartridges better than new flourished - they were much more than your average modern retipper.

It is no coincidence that the three best cartridge rebuilders in my view - Garrotts, Van Den Hul and Andreoli - all produced their own range of superb cartridges.

Anyway you made ''retips'' as well ''rebuild'' + ''refreshment'' of

carts superfluous by your discovery and praise of Denon 103 D

for $ 280. 

I never said this cartridge outperformed my Dynavector or any other cartridge.

All I said was that with an exceptional front end - turntable and arm - it can sound very good - the point being you don't have to spend a kings ransom on an esoteric cartridge to get a great sound.

Unfortunately I see too many folk on this forum buying megabuck cartridges for turntables and arms that are not able to unleash the cartridges' full potential.