When people talking about SoundSmith retiping service It sounds like his cartridges/cantilevers are "the best in the wolrd" and if you retip your original cartridge you will get a better one, but it is not true. This statement is very strange and shows only disrecpect to the original manufacturers, who developed so many unique cartridges over the years. It might works for your Denon, but it is not always works for truly High-End cartridges. It make sence to retip cheap cartridge with the most advanced cantilever and stylus tip, but you can’t rebuild, retip or recantilever ZYX (for example) expecting to get a better cartridge, you are foolling yourself! You will get a very strange hybrid cartridge that no longer ZYX, same with so many other top class cartridges. Otherwise SoundSmith own carts would be better than anything else on the market, but they are not! In so many cases you don’t need Ruby cantilever on certain cartridges, also take it count the stylus moving mass compared to the original. Some cartridges sounds much better than Ruby or Sapphire just with the aluminum or beryllium cantilevers (beryllium is restricted long time ago). For the price of SS retip anyone can buy a used, fully original cartridge in perfect working condition. Also if you will look how the top class cartridge manufacturers (like Technics for example) placed and fixed nude diamonds throught the boron hollowed pipe cantilevers you will realize that NO ONE can do that today the same way at any price. Modern retippers can only glue the stylus tip to the cantilever which is way different method.
