Dear Nandric, I won’t skimp on a retip. The Lapis is a gorgeous sounding cartridge, even with the non-original boron cantilever and vdH stylus. It’s still a long way from needing one, but when that time comes I will definitely go for a diamond cantilever. Namiki produces these (again) combined with their best refined contact stylus. I have asked around and this retip should cost around €1000. Serious money, but probably worth it.
BTW: the Namiki assembly is not of the ’one piece’ variety (like Sony XL-88D), but neither was the original diamond cantilever/stylus of the Lapis, so this option should bring it very close to its original specs.
|
I owned the Purpleheart NS, and two of my friends had also purchased ones for themselves. One had their stylus fall out. Another had the suspension fail in less than a year. Mine had a frequency response curve that looked like a curved cross - the right and left channels literally "crossed" each other at about 11 KHz, which was the only point where the two channels were ever close to each other. I asked AJ Van den Hul to look it over and he said there was a problem with the suspension. As I was able to get my money back, I did. Three bum carts in my immediate circle was too much for me to risk it again. I'm envious of those who got good ones. |
I have owned the KPH NS for over fours years and it has worked beautifully with a Well Tempered Versalex! Never any issues for me. |
Nandric... my conclusions come from my experience, my cartridges didn't sing after partial retip, but poeple need to get top hifi to hear the difference. I had to retip a benz LPS a few month ago, ALL retipping services answer me the same thing " we don't have microridge diamond + boron cantilever but ours diamond cut is much better, you will not hear the difference" that makes me laught. And some of them didn't even told me that they will mount a different cut, it's not serious at all. One time I had a used ZYX univers with a VDH diamond or zyx with shibata, but who cares, it's a diamond after all !!
How do you remove the original glue from the joint pipe ? because each time I have to retip a cartridge, the joint pipe has been changed by the retipper... so different material, different glue...
|
my conclusions come from my experience, my cartridges didn't sing after partial retip, but poeple need to get top hifi to hear the difference. I had to retip a benz LPS a few month ago, ALL retipping services answer me the same thing " we don't have microridge diamond + boron cantilever but ours diamond cut is much better, you will not hear the difference" that makes me laught. And some of them didn't even told me that they will mount a different cut, it's not serious at all. One time I had a used ZYX univers with a VDH diamond or zyx with shibata, but who cares, it's a diamond after all !!
@andychris Great post! I feel the same about re-tipping and refurbishing, even after cartridge designers like J.Carr explained why it's a bad idea, some people still think that re-tippers in their garage are smarter than cartridge designers. We're in minority on this forum, the majority of people are happy about re-tipping with completely different diamonds/cantilevers. They are happy to pay extra money to convert clever design to some frankenstein, because re-tipper said it will be even better. One of the reason, in my opinion, is that only a few people can actually compare original sample to refurbished sample, in this case they must have both cartridges on hands, but after 5 month they can't even remember the sound of their ex original cartridge. And re-tipper will say that it must be better after burn-in (100 hrs). To my surprise many people are happy to deal with less known and less qualified re-tippers they are often advertise on this forum after the job is done. I think some audiophiles does not have enough cartridges, they want to stick to one or two and happy to re-tip them many times (instead of finding something new/better). |
