A&R Cambridge P77 stylus diamond re tipping.

[ajgriff]

Originally Posted by Sergeauckland

It was also a sensible upgrade to the Denon 103, which has a very good generator, but a nail for a stylus. The price of the 103 has now gone so high it's not worth doing, unless one buys a well worn 103.

S.

Denon DL-103 here for £200 (no affiliation):

https://www.av.com/Hi-Fi/Denon-DL103...YaArGZEALw_wcB

Completely disagree with the nail comment for a variety of reasons.

Alan

[Jez1234]

I completely agree with the nail comment and would never use anything with a conical stylus for anything more demanding than disco decks.

I'm a big fan of MC carts though and being old enough to remember the top models of MM cart being something like £70 new there's no way I would pay the going rates to have a "mere" MM cart retipped. Wow! stop press! Was about to comment on getting my Ortofon MC20 Super retipped and looked in the box to see if it was a MkII or not etc and found... a Linn K18 cart in the box! I thought I'd given this away about 20 years ago! Now that's a blast from the past....

Anyway yeah the MC20 Super was superb and they have been put back into production around 5 years back unchanged from the early 90's one I have https://www.ortofon.com/mc-20-super-p-633 unchanged other than I think I paid something like £125 for mine but they are now £650!

[ajgriff]

It pertubs me that two knoweledgeable individuals can summarily dismiss a finely engineered DL-103 conical stylus as a nail particularly as it might dissuade someone from trying the cartridge.

I understand the theoretical advantages of different stylus profiles but in the end my ears are the final arbiter and having listened to dozens of different cartidges over the years I'd say that the DL-103 takes some beating at its price point.

Alan

[Ted Kendall]

To my mind, the major appeal of moving coil pickups is their low compliance, which causes sound to rattle around the record material and come back to the pickup as euphonic early reflections, much as in a concert hall. The conical tip is robust and reliable in broadcast applications, for which the DL103 was originally designed. Use of finer stylus profiles at tracking forces above about 1.5 grams causes problems with excess record and stylus wear. To dismiss a decent tip as a nail is just stupid.

Much as I enjoyed the Entre 1 moving coil, I have long since settled on two pickups which tell me what is actually in the groove - the Shure V15/V and the ADC25. Neither is for the rough-and-tumble of studio use, but, used in appropriate circumstances, they give a sound remarkably close to the master tape in the few cases I have been able to test. The latter also has the advantage of three different tips, one of them spherical, which have enabled greatly improved replay of some awkward pressings.

[lazythread]

Originally Posted by paulsherwin

What are typical charges for retipping a stylus?

Paul, earlier this year Expert retipped some Pickering v15 styli for me with standard .0007" conical tips. The charge was £36.48 + VAT and shipping and included cleaning the assembly. Obviously that may well have changed.

I've always regarded Expert very reasonable in their pricing structure. I use them for profiled and shellac tips as well.

As an aside, I had an original early-mid 1960s Shure N44-5 stylus retipped last year and they reported that the rubber suspension was as good as new. You can never tell!

[Beobloke]

Originally Posted by ajgriff

It pertubs me that two knoweledgeable individuals can summarily dismiss a finely engineered DL-103 conical stylus as a nail particularly as it might dissuade someone from trying the cartridge.

I understand the theoretical advantages of different stylus profiles but in the end my ears are the final arbiter and having listened to dozens of different cartidges over the years I'd say that the DL-103 takes some beating at its price point.

Alan

I'm with you on this one. Although my main cartridge is an Ortofon Cadenza Black, which is considerably more high-tech and expensive, I have a DL103 and I think it's great as, despite being an old and ostensibly low-tech design, with care, it can perform superbly.

The key phrase here, though, is "with care". If you bung it into most modern tonearms, it sounds pleasant enough but not much more. It's easily possible to wonder what all the fuss is about.

However, stick it into a higher mass tonearm and it absolutely comes alive. The best results I've had with mine were in an Empire 598 turntable and, where it currently resides, in the YA-39 tonearm on a Yamaha GT-2000. Its performance on the latter in particular is really quite eye-opening (or ear-opening?!).

[Ted Kendall]

Originally Posted by lazythread

As an aside, I had an original early-mid 1960s Shure N44-5 stylus retipped last year and they reported that the rubber suspension was as good as new. You can never tell!

Shure suspensions have lasted remarkably well in my experience, too - apart from the V15/V I ruined by over-zealous use of IPA. Stiff as a board. That hurt.

[Luxman1050]

Well got a price for Paratrace profile diamond .... £144.00 all inclusive including checking over cart, cleaning etc. Seems a pretty good price to me considering an original P77 used will cost you that plus. Plus you don't know the condition. As a matter of fact I can't say I've seen any for sale lately.

Chris

[Sergeauckland]

That's a good price. The £200 or so they charged me was for a Moving Coil cartridge. These don't have a removable stylus carrier so are more fragile to deal with.

S.

[Luxman1050]

Yeah I think that's a good price. I'll go ahead with that.

[Patrick Dixon]

I've had a few MCs and a few MMs, but I only use Deccas these days.

I had an Entre 1 too once.

[suebutcher]

I have a Garrott P77, but regular replacement of the stylus became too expensive for me. I expected them to last much longer than an elliptical, but it wasn't enough to offset the cost. I'm a fan of 0.5 mil conicals now. Given that most used stereo records were played with the standard 0.7 mil tip, the 0.5 mil rides in a less worn part of the groove.

[Luxman1050]

Well that's a quick service by expert stylus company. It's only taken two days to do my stylus. Should be back by Friday this week. Be interesting to see how it sounds. So this paratrace does it sit in the record grooves deeper or shallower? I have no idea.

Cheers Chris

[Sergeauckland]

Originally Posted by Luxman1050

Well that's a quick service by expert stylus company. It's only taken two days to do my stylus. Should be back by Friday this week. Be interesting to see how it sounds. So this paratrace does it sit in the record grooves deeper or shallower? I have no idea.

Cheers Chris

Neither (or both!) really. As it's a line-contact stylus, unlike a spherical stylus with a point-contact, this sort of stylus contacts the groove along a line, so effectively plays that part of the groove both above and below the normal wear. It's one reason why charity-shop records, which are likely to have been played with a spherical stylus, perhaps an elliptical, are surprisingly playable with a line contact stylus provided the record is clean. As someone who buys almost all of my LPs used, a wet-cleaning vacuum Record Cleaning Machine is a very useful investment.

S.

[Luxman1050]

Interesting info there. That's where I buy most of my LPs. Yeah I have one of those. All records bought get a thorough clean before use.

[ajgriff]

An RCM (record cleaning machine) is pretty much essential for buyers of used records. For those wanting to know more about stylus profiles this is worth a read:

http://pspatialaudio.com/stylus_grooves.htm

I think the section about vinyl deformation is particularly interesting.

Alan

[Ted Kendall]

Doesn't know about pinch effect, though - a stylus does not ride at constant height in a mono groove.

[ajgriff]

Fair point. I'd not spotted that.

Alan