What should I do?


Recently, at a brick and mortar audio dealer, I listened to a high-end moving coil cartridge.  It sounded really good, and I was impressed.  The retail for this cartridge was more then I wanted to spend ($4500), but to make a long story short, the dealer offered me a rare deal, ($2500+tax) brand new, so I bought it.  Got it home, and carefully installed it last night.  I listened to it for about 2.5 hours.  It is really good, but I don't think (at this point), that it's that much better then my old cartridge (at least, not yet).
Ok, so this morning I played around with the loading.  Better, but still I'm not happy.  Now, with only about 5 hours on this new Cartridge, I realize that it's not broken in yet.  I'm looking for input as to your thoughts on how I should proceed.
1.  Are cartridges purchased from high-end dealers returnable (I don't want to create any bad feelings with this dealer, since he gave me such a good price)?
2.  I was told 50 hours of break-in time for this Cartridge.  Should I wait the break-in period to make any decisions?
Any thoughts on how you think I should proceed are appreciated! 


louisl

Showing 1 response by millercarbon

If it doesn't sound good right out of the box odds are it never will. That goes for everything. Even cartridges. You should be loving it from the first side. Then loving it even more after you've got it nicely dialed in with VTA and loading. Then from that point on there should be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months of one night after another being surprised at catching yourself enjoying aspects of music you never noticed before.

That's what it should be like. Unless you are prone to buyers remorse. Which tends to be more likely on impulse purchases. Which between the way you said zero about doing any research, or even that you were looking for a cartridge, and seemed to have bought based on price without even asking about terms, sounds like an impulse purchase to me. 

Don't really know what you should do. What I would do is pay more attention and consider a little more carefully next time.