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Family Problems...

My last post here was about how to keep my baby away from my Magnepans, but it seems I had my eye on the wrong person in my home! I stupidly let my wife take over turntable duties for an evening while I was busy in my office only to come home to a broken cartridge. I believe she literally dropped the needle on the record and part of it broke. So now I seek the wise advice of the internets on what to do. But first more details...

It's a 6-month old Denon DL301-mk2 and I was quite happy with it prior to it breaking. I know there are re-tipping services that might be able to fix it. It looks like material at the pivot of the cantilever that fixes it in place has separated from the rest of the cartridge. Think it's worth repairing or would scrapping it be the route you'd go? Again, I was quite happy with it before and I'm not particularly interested in experimenting with similarly priced cartridges at this point. 
hapafoto
dekay's avatar
dekay
5,349 posts
 
2Juki has the 301/II for $300 and a USA based place has it for $329 (quick Google search).

Guessing that the Scarecrow Sprinker I recommended some time back is looking better now eh?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jHYV6nJksw

Anyway, my wife used to confuse the side weight jig with the tonearm lift lever on my SME so I've been there. 

I simply replaced the stylus on my MI Grado, so no big woop @ well under $100 a pop @ the time

Big woop is that I recently found a new OEM stylus that I don't recall purchasing - so I'm set for another  few years.

DeKay 
kr4's avatar
kr4
3,649 posts
 
I bought my new wife a nice Beogram TT with push-button control of tone arm lift/lower.  She loved it and never touched my TT.


rdk777's avatar
rdk777
564 posts
 
Send it to VAS Audio.  Steve will retip for around $250 - but, best to call him for an exact quote and discuss options (upgrades).  He repairs tons of Denon's and knows what he's doing.  His turnaround time may also be better than Soundsmith. Cartridges break - they're very fragile. 

https://vasnyinc.com/repair-service/

hapafoto OP
11 posts
 
Very helpful, all! The wife felt badly that it was damaged and surprised me this evening by telling me purchased a new one. I guess I’ll still look into re-tipping the broken one to have a backup down the line. 
geof3
1,124 posts
 
Second or third the VAS recommendation. Steve reworked my cart... very reasonable. He is busy, so turn around isn’t super fast right now, but the job is done right. Get another cart and move on. My wife doesn’t really like to play with the TT, so as mentioned prior, we’ve got streaming gear to use. She likes it, she can listen to “her” music and it’s all good. She loves the vinyl sound but isn’t “into it”.
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