How often do you demagnitize your MC cartridge?

Wes, you're completely right and you've chosen absolutely the right path to follow advices of engineers instead of marketeers as done by many "pro" audiophiles. I think bases of electronics are easily explainable to everyone in the public and they realy can help not to swallow crap very often offered by dealers.

It so happens that the manufacturers of the lyra cartridges are "engineers". They recommend demagnetizing of MC cartridges periodically. I do mine at most twice per year.

In any event, I am basing my statements on observations not "hear-say" as some would have it.

Marakanetz, since you are throwing stones: it might serve you well to look at your initial contribution to this thread. It is certainly not in keeping with what an "engineer" would write. Statement such as "The cartridge normally must be magnetized...." is trite at best.

YA Baby!! (said in a Austin Powers inflection of course)

"engineers" get paid to promote nonsence sometimes believe it or not or to promote their own product to demagnetize it in particular. they can fool ya with their knowlege and yo gonna believe as lambs sometimes to wolves instead of sheepherds...

i own helikon myself and benz m.09 as a back-up both of the cartridges adviced to be demagnetized...

did anyone try to find some vintage cartridge demagnetizer??
tape heads need to be demagnetized since they every time accept variable magnetic field from the tape what about cartridge???

Copper is not a magnetizable material. It cannot become magnetized. The coils in a cartridge are made of copper, usually very high purity. The magnetic action that acts on the copper coils is an inductive process that does not result in any "permanent" magnetization of the copper. It simply induces a current in the copper coils in an electromagnetic process like a generator. Copper is not a material that can become magnetized. Copper transformer windings don't become magnetized, copper speaker voice coils don't become magnetized, copper commutators in generators and alternators don't become magnetized, and copper coils in cartridges don't become magnetized.

Why would there be a need to de-magnetize something that is not magnetized in the first place? Now, maybe there is something else around the cartridge, like the screws or other hardware that can become magnetized, but not the coils.