audio-talk

That’s a great price Mark, will be interesting to read your thoughts on them.....

Just in today - box with two retipped 103R's . Will report in stages....
If I can't get a good check in next day or two before I go on holiday ( next week ) , I will be passing one on to Lenny ( on the coast ) for testing on his system. Will take one to work tomorrow, have a look on the microscope then get him to collect tomorrow afternoon.

Took in one cart & had a squint at the diamond and cantilever on the Nikon travelling microscope this morning at work. Quite a bit of magnification required to see the elliptical profile on the diamond.
Pic here shows best view I could get, photographed through eyepiece.
The cantilever is running right to left on this picture, just the head of the cantilever ( out of focus ), with its end on the left, is in this view, with the tip of the diamond in focus. You can seen the long axis of the ellipse running north/south. It looks a bit off in angle on the picture, but it was actually very close to 90 degrees as seen by eye through the eyepieces, and the apparent angle was a bit dependant on the angle of the lamp I had to use to illuminate from the side to show the diamond profile. I'm happy it's a professional job, have now passed it on to Len for run-in and testing.

Lenny was very happy with the cartridge , used it for over two weeks, with 5hrs listening last week.
He agreed the cantilever and diamond were well aligned.
He said the sound has all the good points of the 103R with some more treble extension, particularly on the inner tracks. he's going to get his current 103R done very soon, after he does an Ebony re-body.

I've got this cart back and will fit it at the weekend.

Sorry I meant he ran it for over 5 hours on Tuesday before I got it back - he was keen !

i would be interested to know what made you choose those guys in Germany?

Recently I haven't seen anybody offering a basic re-tip of 103/103R at a reasonable price. I like the cartridge as it is, possibly with an elliptical as the icing on the cake, so he seemed like a godsend.

I can recommend the 'Nadelspezialist' re-tip without hesitation. I got the cartridge ( previously run-in by my friend ) back & installed late this afternoon, and have played about 4 sides so far. It sounds as good as any 103R I've had, either a new standard one or any re-tip. The Van den Hul one is perhaps ( not sure yet ) a touch better than this in the female vocal range - speakers swaps required to judge this though - but I prefer the upper treble of this one. It does seem a touch better on inner tracks than standard, the elliptical profile is something I always wanted to try. Otherwise everything you expect is there as should be - the midrange tone, dynamics, natural presentation. I have my last one, rather worn, just removed, now lined-up for a similar re-tip. Now I'm looking at a 'body' upgrade ( me at 25 ? ) , there's a bronze one that looks nice but pricey. Watch this space....

At the other end of the scale...
I cut the cantilever off with a pair of scissors and superglued the cantilever assembly from a rega apheta on in its place.
Honestly, it sounds great