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KOETSU ROSEWOOD DILEMMA

I have an old Koetsu Rosewood Longbody from long ago. It came with a Linn LP12/Ittok, so cost nothing. But it had no stylus, and I’ve never heard it.

The stylus was sheared clean off. Some colorful fuzz was left at the scene, and forensics showed it to be red and green woolen fibers. The culprit was a clumsy audiophile in a red-and-green sweater (Christmas colors, so maybe too much egg-nog) who snagged the diamond in his cuff.

Despite the violence, the cantilever is perfect — straight and true, with a beautifully beveled flat tip for seating the stone and setting SRA. It’s not hole-through, so probably was an adhesive-only bond. Coils are fine. Suspension seems fine — sitting on a stationary LP at the right VTF, it rides just right, not low nor high — and compliance feels in the right ballpark. All in all it’s very clean, and produces sound. There’s no erosion of the gold plating, so it may have been newish. 91447 is carved into the aluminum, and an “S” — does S indicate a “signature” model?

Is it worth retipping?

As you can see, I know nothing, so any suggestions are welcome, even negative ones, especially from those who know the cartridge, and have experience with retipping.

My intention now is to keep the boron rod and just add a diamond — it should be quite close to the original sound — but I’m open to change. Installing a new cantilever+stylus is easier and less expensive, but the resulting sound is an unknown, maybe better, maybe not, maybe not Koetsu. Why have a Koetsu if it doesn’t sound like one?

Stylus-type is an issue too. I can’t even find what the original stylus was, I believe a type of hyper-elliptical. I think a fancier cut would add detail but not alter the sound otherwise, but might be wrong.

So — as I know nothing, and my few ideas may be wrong, guidance is needed.


bimasta
bpoletti
1,004 posts
 
@!invictus005 - there are many other options.  You have expressed your opinion as fact when it is not even close to fact.  And it is a very limited and expensive option.
invictus005
597 posts
 
@bpoletti Wrong. It’s a fact. People who can afford expensive cartridges should stop being cheap and do a factory repair or a proper replacement. If one can’t afford it, one shouldn’t have bought expensive materialistic toys to begin with. 
bpoletti
1,004 posts
 
What a jerk.  Are you still ruining your records by hard scrubbing them with 91% isopropanol?  Chemists say you're 100% wrong.  And you are telling others how to ruin their records.
Post removed 
bimasta's avatar
bimasta OP
158 posts
 
Thank you all for the suggestions so far. The response has been much more than I expected.

As Nandric notes, “price is of ’some’ consideration.” As he also says, Koetsu doesn’t “retip” — they gut the cartridge, leaving only the body. Maybe, if it’s a current model, they replace it with the innards of that model. But a long-discontinued model like mine...? How do they fill my empty little Rosewood box? I don’t know, maybe with the innards of their cheapest, a Black, and charge me more than I would pay for a brand new Black... if I wanted a Black.

I want a Rosewood Longbody — and I have one, except for its smallest, and most important part, the stylus.

This leads back to my question — Is it worth fixing?

I only know its reputation: glorious midrange, weak in bass and treble — much like the Quad 57 electrostatic speakers, which I know well, I had many.

Three all-Quad systems — 2 pairs of Stacked Quads (8 panels), and a single pair for the bedroom. Each panel was driven by its own Quad II valve amp. I even had spare Q-II amps as dedicated power supplies for the three Quad 22 preamps which controlled each system. It was heavenly.

Sounds expensive, certainly at today’s prices. But at the time and place, nobody wanted those obsolete old-fogey speakers. And valve amps? Why, when you could have 20-times the power with a Krell? People accepted any offer for their “old crap”— they even threw in all their unused new spare valves for free, eg real Gold Lion KT66s — just be rid of it all.

I know the Rosewood isn’t an “all-rounder”, and of course I won’t use it to play Heavy Metal. No loss, I don’t play Heavy Metal. But it might be ideal (even unsurpassable, like the Quad 57) for the right, midrange-dominant music — solo acoustic instruments, intimate vocals, small chamber groups both classical and jazz — and that is my main musical diet.

Or do I have ridiculous, over-romanticized notions of the old Rosewood? Am I choosing an old shriveled senile woman to be my lover because she was so beautiful in those tattered old photographs?

If this new info triggers any new thinking, please share.
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