Experiences buying used cartridges

When people talking about SoundSmith retiping service It sounds like his cartridges/cantilevers are "the best in the wolrd" and if you retip your original cartridge you will get a better one, but it is not true. This statement is very strange and shows only disrecpect to the original manufacturers, who developed so many unique cartridges over the years. It might works for your Denon, but it is not always works for truly High-End cartridges. It make sence to retip cheap cartridge with the most advanced cantilever and stylus tip, but you can’t rebuild, retip or recantilever ZYX (for example) expecting to get a better cartridge, you are foolling yourself! You will get a very strange hybrid cartridge that no longer ZYX, same with so many other top class cartridges. Otherwise SoundSmith own carts would be better than anything else on the market, but they are not! In so many cases you don’t need Ruby cantilever on certain cartridges, also take it count the stylus moving mass compared to the original. Some cartridges sounds much better than Ruby or Sapphire just with the aluminum or beryllium cantilevers (beryllium is restricted long time ago). For the price of SS retip anyone can buy a used, fully original cartridge in perfect working condition. Also if you will look how the top class cartridge manufacturers (like Technics for example) placed and fixed nude diamonds throught the boron hollowed pipe cantilevers you will realize that NO ONE can do that today the same way at any price. Modern retippers can only glue the stylus tip to the cantilever which is way different method.

vegasears

Buying a used phono cartridge for me would be like buying a used Tooth Brush!

+1
That's very well said!

@vegasears untill you will find a used vintage cartridge that outperform your new $5000 cartridge for 1/10 of the price. Or do you believe NEW is always better performer? Sadly new products from the legendary cartridge designers like Takeda San is no longer available and it's impossible to find NOS. Ignoring vintage (used) cartridges you miss a lot, not to mention the fact that if you believe in burn-in theory your new cartridge is not performing well in the first 200 hours (what a waste of time).  

Most of my best cartridges are used, vintage HQ thirty or more years old. 
The best I have heard are from the 80´s, one is modern (MC). One costed me 150 dollars + postage. I will never buy new $2000 cart.

I bought 3 HQ MM carts from V. Simakov of grgaudio, very happy with all.

@harold-not-the-barrel

I bought 3 HQ MM carts from V. Simakov of grgaudio, very happy with all.

Bought two as well, no problem with communication, used to talk over the phone a few times, my cartridge is still OK after 4 years, but the one i bought for a friend turned to be deffected pretty soon (Sony XL55). My friend shipped it to SoundSmith and they said the stylus is worn out and the coil is dead and must be fully repaired, the cost of the service alone is about $450-500. As always (confirmed by many agon buyers) Victor’s statement was like "200-300 hrs of use" in the listing which is not true. A bit tricky seller when the listying is not on ebay.