Cartridge repair by Moscow based Roman??

Chakster makes some valid points but his comments on the Denon 103(R) conical are absurd. That cartridgestylus can easily be run for 800-1000 hours with careful cueing and clean vinyl. The 300 hour statement is ridiculous. The Denon conical is one of the best conicals out there-it is far superior to cheap bonded conicals that you’ll find on $50-$100 cartridges.

@hdm No matter how clean is your vinyl, with conical tip at 2-3g tracking force there is a very high pressure on very small contact area of the diamond, it wear off quickly, the contact points are two dots. This is one of the most serious disadvantages of the conical/spherical tip.

Conical tip has the shortest life span, if you want to damage your records you can use it much longer, but 300-500 hrs is maximum for conical tip. Nobody use such tip anymore!

If you believe that Conical can be used for 1000 hours i’m afraid you have to learn a bit more about stylus profiles. 1000 hrs is for a Line Contact stylus, about 2000 for a Micro Ridge and related.

It is not capable of the same kind of information retrieval as a high quality line contact or microridge (which will last much longer than the Denon conical) but it’s not going to wear out in 300 hours unless grossly abused.

Micro Line or Micro Ridge can be used for much longer just because the tracking force is extremely low and the shape of the contact area is LINE or RIDGE, so the pressure distributed at wider contact area. Anyway, last generation of Micro Ridge life span is about 2000 hrs max.

Conical life span is shorter than Elliptical.

I don’t want to give an exact life span, but logically it easy to understand:

Conical 300+
Elliptical about 500+
Shibata about 800+
Micro Ridge 1200+

Take in count a price difference between those profiles and try to figure out why the Conical is the cheapest and why the Micro Ridge is so expensive. It is very difficult to manufacture Micro Ridge profile. More info here. 

Denon’s Conical tip was made in the 60’s for AM/FM Radio Broadcast at NHK in Japan, Denon is a broadcast cartridge, dirt cheap with the worst profile on the planet in today’s standards.

@jperry 

Absolutely, and I did read that. As Chakster pointed out, any cartridge is going to have to shipped to the retipper for evaluation and even then they will not guarantee that the repair can be completed successfully; there is always a risk that you end up with a dead cartridge. 

My thought was simply that a) I'm not aware of anything inside the Art 9 that would make it any more difficult to repair than other cartridge (but would be curious to know if that is case and how it differs!) and b) if there's no internal damage and there is exposed cantilever to work with the repair in this case is relatively simple (at least for the skilled people who do this work LOL!). 

But yes, any retipper is going to need to physically inspect the cartridge before proceeding-that goes without saying. And it is their standard response.

Chakster: I can assure you that I don't need to learn anything about stylus profiles from you with respect to this. 

I ran Denon 103R's, both stock and modified (mainly with line contact styli) for about 7 years and about 6000 hours. So I'm relatively familiar with the cartridge and its merits, as well as the lifespan of the stock stylus and whether or not it will damage records at 300 hours or more. 

I've run the stock Denon conical for 800-1000 hours personally, as have many others, without any damage to my/their records. 

All conicals are not created equal and the Denon conicals on the 103 and 103R are up there with the best. 

I would agree with you that MR is a better profile both in terms of performance and longevity and have used LC or MR styli on my stereo cartridges for the past 7-8 years and for about 30 years before using the Denon 103R stock for a year. 

My current cartridge utilizes a Namiki MR stylus-hopefully that meets with your approval. And I have also used the Ogura PA profile (JCarr is on record as saying that with meticulous (clean) records and careful cueing 3000 hours should be possible with that stylus-those are major factors in terms of stylus longevity) for a very long time, as well as the Gyger. 

@hdm this is fine, but it’s you and your cartridge/records, i don’t know anyone in this world who will use a Line Contact tip for 6000 hrs. If it is good for you please do not try to tell anyone that it is normal, because it is not.

You will never find anything what you said online in any documentation from anyone, so you don’t have to learn from me, indeed. But you can learn from experts and cartridge designers. 

The longest life span for a MR tip that i ever seen was for the brand new MR tip for ZYX Premium 4D and it was 2000 hrs estimate at 2g tracking force. Some cartridges can track at 1.2g tracking force and i can believe that MR tip on those cart can be used a bit longer.

How come anyone can use one LC tip for 6000 hrs over 7 years ? This is beyond my understanding, sorry. It’s like telling people that the earth is flat and lying on 3 turtles.

Here is an article from SoundSmith, i think as a re-tipper he could lower the typical life span of the styli, but not too much. Here is a quote from that article:

Wear, Tear and Life

So we know that the more extreme line contacts reduce wear.... but what is the difference?

Apparently according to Jico (manufacturer of the highly regarded SAS stylus), the amount of playing time where a stylus will maintain its specified level of distortion at 15kHz is as follows:

• Spherical / Conical - 150hrs
• Elliptical - 250hrs
• Shibata/Line contact - 400hrs
• SAS/MicroRidge - 500hrs

This is not to say that at 500 hrs a SAS stylus is "worn out" - but at that stage the wear has reached the point where distortion at 15kHz surpasses the level specified by Jico for a new stylus. (Which I believe is 3%).

Some manufacturers have traditionally defined a stylus as being "worn out" when it starts to damage the record... in these terms the figures provided by Jico can at least be doubled, and in some cases quadrupled.

Summary

In pure sonic terms on pristine vinyl a top notch elliptical can do as well as all but the very best Line Contact / Shibata styli, but will ultimately be surpassed by the better MicroLine styli.

However in terms of reduced wear on both stylus and records - the entry point is the Line contact / Shibata category.

In terms of playing back worn vinyl line contact stylus types also have an advantage in that they can contact "virgin" unworn vinyl.

Narrower side radius = improved tracking and reduced high frequency distortion.

Do we really need a peeing contest?

OP,
I would shoot Steven Leung an email with your details. He fixed a Koetsu for me that was dead in one channel in under 3 week turnaround at what I consider a fair price.

Yes you will need to send it to him for him to evaluate, he won't give you much of an idea by description or even photos.

[email protected]