Have you ever broken the needle?

In the days when your bishop still used vinyl, his grandmother once snapped off a very expensive cantilever by rubbing her finger over the stylus, "to knock the dust off" before attempting to play one of her Lawrence Welk records.

I buried the cartridge with her.

I trust there was some separation between those two events? Or I'm never offering to change discs at your house ;-)

Shame on you, Cornfedboy.

bozo: please accept my apology. my first post was a feeble attempt at humor that obviously was too pointed. i truly meant no personal disrespect but see now how that may be difficult to believe. again, i'm sorry for any ill effects i caused. -kelly

I broke Lyra Lydian Beta stylus(cantilever was OK) just like you during mounting my new cartridge and sent it over to VanDenHul where they charged significantly less money than in Japan. Anyway Lyra uses VanDenHul stylus.
On the other hand I still had Benz Glider(it's already more than 6000 hours on that one with original stylus and cantilever and it doesn't change!!!) so temporarily I could listen for it. Now I've got Helikon and Benz M.9 as a backup.