Who's done it besides me ?

I have snapped off the cantilever on my Clearaudio Virtuouso, not once, but twice.  The second time was shortly after I had it retipped.  After that, it sat in it's box for a long time, I was afraid to use it out of fear of snapping it off again.  I hate the way the cantilever extends so far in front of the body.  I do have it mounted again and it sounds great, but I'm super paranoid when I use that turntable (which is not very often).  I had the first retip done by Soundsmith and the second by Andy Kim.  I didn't get to spend enough time with the Soundsmith retip to form an opinion.  Andy was a lot faster and easier to work with and more affordable.  He would be my first choice if I ever find myself needing that service again.  Nothing negative about Soundsmith, I just liked dealing with Andy better.

Chakster to each his own. Only MM cartridges have removable styli. I know of no MM cartridge including the Ortofon 2M Black that can approach the performance of a modern MC cartridge, or a wood bodied Grado. I have owned all of them, Shure, Pickering, several Stantons, Empire, ADC, Goldring and I’m probably missing a few. Why?

I can recall some in random order ( i use some with 100k Ohm loading):

1) Grace LEVEL II (LC-OFC) BR/MR (Boron, Micro Ridge), orange plastic insert.

2) Grace F14 (LC-OFC) Beryllium / Line Contact, blue plastic insert.

3) Audio-Technica AT-ML180 OCC beryllium or Boron version, MicroLine stylus.

4) Glanz MFG-61 Boron cantilever, PH stylus tip.

5) Stanton SC-100 WOS, Sapphire coated cantilever, Stereohedron II tip.


I like MC cartridges too: Miyabi, Miyajima, FR-7fz just to name a few.

I weighed mine on a scale that was not made for checking the cartridge weight. The scale pulled the cartridge down and bent the cantilever. Expensive mistake!!

Yes, scales made with ferrous material that can be attracted to the magnets in a cartridge can be a problem.  The only time I came close to damaging a cartridge is when the balance type of scale I was using had a ferrous beam.  What is really crazy about this is that this was a Shure scale that is made to set tracking force on cartridges.  It obviously is only usable with MM-type cartridges which don't have permanent magnets, but, still this was a stupid design choice (an older Shure scale that I had utilized an aluminum beam).

I have numerous vintage MMs, particularly Shure and Grado.  I also have a bunch of MCs (mostly Denon but also Ortofon and Dynavector) and a Grado Statement Reference.  They all sound good, in different ways, with the right stylus.  It depends on the music and you taste.  I will say that when I rip LPs with my PS Audio Phono Converter I use a wood body Denon DL-103R with ruby cantilever and Line Contact tip, with a Denon AU 320 stepup,even though I could set the Phono Converter's gain high enough to not need the transformer.

IMHO, the MCs also need a stepup and very careful loading.  I've never heard an MC head amp sound as good as I can get it with any decent stepup transformer and a loading box. 

For a 10x stepup it's easy to know what load you are getting.  For example your stock 47k MM phono pre will present 470 ohms load through a 10x stepup.  For other stepup values the transformer formula and a calculator are helpful. 

The art lies in shunt loading your preamp inputs to get the sound you want.  RCA Ts at the inputs are needed. You can solder resistors across RCA plugs (the ones for making cables) and plug them in the Ts, or make a switchbox (loading box) and plug that in.  Just start at a net load of about or a little less than 2x the cart's resistance and bump it up until you hear the sweet spot. 

For example, a Denon DL-103 (not the "R") is 40 ohms.  I start at about net 75 ohms at the cart.  To get this with a 10x stepup I need to have 7.5k at my phono pre input.  With the parallel resistance formula I calculate I need 8.92k ohms in parallel with my 47k preamp.  We will want 1% tolerance resistors (E96 value table) so the closest values are 8.87k and 9.09k; either will be fine to start the listening.  Then bump it up by 5 to 10 ohms...

If you aren't willing to do this, or have it done for you, you won't get the most out of your MC.