Retip for zyx

@lewm 

Lew: I think your post above (and Jonathan Carr's similar advice from 2013) in retipping with "like for like" is very important. 

I've retipped 5 different cartridges with two different retippers in the past 6-7 years with 3 different cantilever materials (ruby, sapphire and boron) and 3 different stylus profiles. But all of the stylus profiles were line contact or microridge. 

Only anecdotal based on my experience but I think that if you are switching from one pretty exotic stylus profile to another (FG, various line contact or microridge, shibata, etc.) as opposed to switching from a conical to the more extreme profiles (ie. retipping something like a Denon 103R with a line contact stylus is a pretty major improvment IMO), that a change in cantilever material will probably have more of an effect in changing the personality of the cartridge.

I think this is where some run into problems with retips as the personality can change dramatically and one might be disappointed; on the other hand due to subjective listening preferences another listener may in fact prefer that exact same "personality change" and prefer the retipped version and feel the cartridge is improved. It's just the nature of our hobby.  

I tend to share my preference for boron cantilevers with JCarr, so while I feel one might get a performance boost moving from an aluminum cantilever to either ruby/sapphire, I'd be reluctant to replace any boron cantilever with something other than boron. But I can fully understand how someone might actually prefer the other options. 

At this stage I'm partial to boron/microridge in terms of what it brings to the table and can see myself sticking with that option in the future even if the cartridge was originally voiced with something else. That may not meet with a "purist" point of view but at least my decision on that is grounded in some experience and my own subjective preferences.

@tooblue 

the picture of the cantilever/stylus assembly you posted is for which ZYX? Thanks for posting that, a picture is worth a 1,000 words.  

That was a picture of my ZYX Airy III, but you will find same cantilever construction even on their top of the line Ultimate Dynamic and down to the lower model Yatra etc. 

Before I got crazy with turntables, tonearms, and cartridges, which must have been about 10 years ago and definitely coincides with my finding these various fora for discussion,  I owned only one turntable, one tonearm, and one cartridge at a time, for the previous 30 years of audiophilia.  That last single cartridge was/is a Koetsu Urushi, which I purchased new in Tokyo, thanks to the language skills of our son.  In the pre-crazy days, it rode only in my Triplanar on my Notts Hyperspace. I still have the Urushi and the TP but not the Notts.  The Urushi sat in its wooden box for the last at least 6-7 years while I happily fiddled around with many other cartridges, most of them MM or MI types. 

I very grossly estimate that the Urushi has a few hundred hours on it, and I was thinking of selling it after first having it inspected by SS, so I could make an honest statement of its condition.  I recently learned that SS can now do boron cantilevers, which I believe is a match to the Koetsu material, or at least its the same metal, and I was lately also thinking about a re-tip at SS.  I could probably get it re-tipped by Koetsu via the dealer in Tokyo from whom I purchased it, but that would entail a lot of footwork for my son Dan, and he is a busy guy.  Anyway, I only recently decided to give it a whirl, before spending any money. I mounted it on my Kenwood L07D with aftermarket copper platter mat and riding on the L07J tonearm in an 18g Ortofon L9000 headshell that I bought in Tokyo.  (I always wondered whether the effective mass of the TP was sufficiently high to get the most out of the Urushi, which has low compliance.)  Wow!  I am pleasantly surprised.  After some burn-in using the Cardas test LP and after a few more hours of playing music, the Urushi is sounding great and is no longer a candidate for dismissal just yet.  It's probably still a bit short of my very favorite MI and the ZYX Universe, but I don't remember it ever sounding this good on my Notts/TP.  (But on the other hand, my system is also better now than it was then.) The one criticism so far is bass articulation, compared to the Universe, the AT ART7, and the Acutex LPM320.  However, the midrange and treble are really delicious. I guess the next step, following JCarr's advice, would be to do the Boron cantilever/OCL from SS.

Lew: If you only have a few hundred hours on that Koetsu I wouldn’t even think of retipping it until you hit 1500-1800 hours. As long as it’s sounding good and the suspension is good just let it do its thing and enjoy it. My guess is that the bass is just a bit rounder on the Koetsu compared to your other cartridges and a retip will not likely change that. If it only has 200-300 hours on it I think you’d be throwing good money away.

A bit of a run on the Cardas LP (I think everyone should have that record-every new or retipped cartridge I buy gets about an hour or two on that record before playing any music and I’d say that is the equivalent of playing 50 hours of music and suffering through the break in process ) probably loosened it up nicely after being in storage and, as you say, it will probably get better quickly now after playing a bit more music. And you may well be hearing a more sympathetic match of cartridge/tonearm as you say.

It is great that Peter has a boron option now. When I was retipping cartridges with him about 5-6 years ago he did not-ruby (apart from the entry level aluminum/eliptical he did) was the only option.

Interestingly, there was talk of boron cantilevers being in short supply and possibly even disappearing about 2-3 years ago but that seems to have passed now.

Warren Jarrett over at the Steve Hoffman forum very graciously organized a group buy of Namiki boron cantilevers with microridge styli earlier this year and I picked up two at that time and then bought another from a member there who sent a cartridge to Soundsmith that could not be repaired. I’ve used one in a retip I did recently, so have the other two, but wish at this time that I’d bought at least one more and possibly two.

Just to clarify, I do not believe that Soundsmith’s OCL (optimized contact line) stylus is on the boron cantilever that Soundsmith has. Pretty sure that it is a more traditional line contact or microridge but that could be confirmed with Peter. I believe the OCL (which I had on a retip that I had Peter do a number of years back-I also had his standard line contact on ruby so am familiar with both of those) is only on the ruby cantilevers that he supplies.

I had a bit of a love/hate relationship with that OCL, which supposedly closely resembles both the cutter head and Ortofon’s Replicant stylus (which I have not had). I found it to be a bit of a detail champ, but it was without doubt the most difficult stylus that I have ever set up. It was extremely finicky and very small changes in VTF/SRA and azimuth would really throw it out of wack and result in it sounding rather poor.

The more standard microridge styli (still very good) that I’ve been using the past few years are much easier to set up and much less sensitive to very small changes in setup with maybe a very, very slight loss of detail.

@lewm, if you are interested and since I believe you have the same Universe I do, original copper X model, I would be willing to send you mine after a brief break in to compare to your stock model. I value your thoughts on this matter and would be very interested in your take on the results. What say you?