As for "chakster", although your contributions maybe well intended, they do not address the question, you do not appear to have any personal experiences in dealing with Soundsmith’s work, therefore your input adds up to nothing but conjecture and a waste of everyone’s time including your own. Perhaps in the future you’ll consider directing your energies in less vacuous pursuits.
I believe my statemend does not hurt your feelings?
SoundSmith retipped many thousand cartridges from all over the world (from very old to brand new). Peter is one of the well known retippers, there are many in every part of the world.
I decided NOT to proceed with SoundSmith cantilever/stylus for my ex ZYX Premium 4D SB, because this cartridge has
unique cantilever that no one can provide, there is no equal replacement from any retipper in the world. That cantilever was made exclusively for ZYX. This is one of the reson this cartridge cost $5000 and factory exchange (instead of retip) will cost 60% of the retail price. Why i did not proceed with relatively cheap (compared to ZYX factory exchange) SoundSmith service? See J.Carr quote below.
I have personal experience with another qualified and highly regarded retipper from another country, and i have compared retipped/refurbished cartridge to original cartridge (same model), i must say that the difference was huge and not in favor of refurbished cartridge. In my case one Boron Pipe cantilever was replaced with another (different) Boron Rod cantilever with the same stylus profile, but slightly different mass. So i will never ever retip/refurbish any cartridge. My cartridge was Technics 205c mk4 and it was MM cartridge, not MC. I have a few more different cartridges retipped/refurbished, never again!
If you don’t want to study the subject and all you need is some other members to tell you "yes, go for it" then it’s up to you. Your cartridge is not special and i think you can theoretically upgrade to a better cantilever and stylus.
But this is not universal rule and does not apply for every cartridge if you want to know the full story.
No one can explain better than J.Carr who is a (Lyra) cartridge designer himself. And this is what he said:
To retip a cartridge that was originally equipped with a stylus made by one manufacturer with one made by a different manufacturer is like rebuilding a Porsche engine with Jaguar pistons and crankshaft - the components used for rebuilding may be of high quality, but the design philosophy is rather different from the original.
Still, as one poster wrote above, changing only the stylus will alter the sound less than if the cantilever material is changed. When a cartridge is designed, the designer will consider the moving mass (sum of the stylus, cantilever and coils), the resonant character of the cantilever, and the (sonic) propagation velocity of the cantilever (affected by the cantilever’s mass and rigidity), then choose the suspension and dampers accordingly. If you change the cantilever material, you are effectively throwing the original designer’s calculations away.
Try to understand what a cartridge designer explained on this forum once.
Some people just don’t want to understand it, they just trying to save money of third-party service instead of original designer service. They can refurbish many cartridges making a very strange hybrids out of the genius original design. It may be impressive for you, but not for me, because i know what i’m talking about.
I would rather buy another original cartridge (and i did that many times) instead and it’s far more reasonable when the cartridge is about $800 like your Dyna.
For under $500 you could buy a
Dynavector KARAT 23RS with unique short Ruby cantilever and Micro Ridge stylus. Here is
the interview with Dynavector cartridge designer. I paid $400 for NOS on ebay last year. This is a whole new cartridge (much better than yours), but you will pay more to SoundSmith just for refurbishing (for new cantilever and new tip). Makes no sense to me, maybe it’s ok for you.
