How old is your cartridge?

There is a difference between the age of a cartridge and the age of the stylus tip. 

A New Old Stock cartridge can be 40 y.o. (unused), and your stylus can be used only for 2000 hrs max (with the best possible stylus profile). 

I've been lucky with my EPC-205C MK3. It has the original stylus, and the suspension, said to be its weakness is still fine.

This particular cartridge in my possession sounds great. It beat the AT440mlb, Shure V15 III HE & IV MR and Hana EL, all of which I used within 2020. It sounds so natural and relaxed compared to the rest. The Hana came second. The Glider SM which is my primary cartridge sounds better, but I'm tempted to say I probably can live with the Technics if I should lose the Benz.

I think it will need a retip in a year. I'll see what the retipper will say about the suspension. 

Dear @audite84 : "  I've been lucky with my EPC-205C MK3. It has the original stylus, and the suspension, said to be its weakness is still fine.

This particular cartridge in my possession sounds great. It beat the AT440mlb, Shure V15 III HE & IV MR and Hana EL, all of which I used within 2020. "

That Technics is very good quality performer and beats several vintage top cartridges as the AT or Stanton, the 205C MK4 is even better I owned.

When you decide to re-tip it try to send it to VdH , Dr. Van Den Hul MM reference cartridge that he still owns is the Technics EPC100C MK4, he fixed mine when no other re-tipper accepted to fix it because they just can´t do it.

R.

@rauliruegas Thank you very much for sharing your experience. I started with the EPC-205C MKII, then moved up the line to the MKIII. I'll keep an eye on the MKIV. And yes, I'll send my stylus to Dr. VDH for retipping. 

@audite84

You can’t ship anything to VdH if you don’t know him personally, you can only ask his official distributor in your country if it’s acceptable. The price is insane and not worth it with your 205c mk3 cartridge. I seriously doubt the information about VdH personal retip/rebuild is valid today. Many people who retipped before reported that most likely he’s no longer retip/rebuild anything personally, except for a very special occasion.

I think you should try JICO SAS first, they got replacement stylus designed for your cartridge, the benefit is S.A.S. profile (Super Analogue Stylus). My original mk4 was better than S.A.S., but the situation with mk3 is different, I preferred the sound of S.A.S. over original mk3 stylus.

The benefit of the original elliptical is extremely low mass with hollow pipe boron cantilever.

Fist S.A.S. combo was Boron Rod + S.A.S. profile, now it’s Sapphire or Ruby cantilever with the same profile. Try it if you can find it!

You said the damper is OK, but how do you know? I bought at least 3 samples of mk3 and 4 samples of mk4. The damper was weak on all of them, except for Axel’s re-build samples!

I’m waiting for my NOS p-mount version of 205p mk4 to check if I’m lucky or not, gonna get it in a month or so. My last try with Technics.

In my opinion Audio-Technica AT-ML180 OCC is superior cartridge to all those Technics 100 and 205 series. Search on audiogon if you want to know why.