Aftermarket stylii manufacturers & quality

[richardz]

Even the manufacturers are not as good as they once were.

I bought three Shure N44-7 styli, and each one sits at a different height using the same cartridge and VTF.

Find an assembly that works for you, get a spare that also works for you, and get them retipped when replacement time comes.

[richard]

Jean wrote,

So many differences in price , like Lyra in Japan asking the price of a new cartridge just for retip ? 

We are living in unstable times. Currency exchange rates are reflecting this instability now, and I think that Jico's price increase reflects this. I think that for any manufacturer to offer the best needles of yesteryear, they must charge much higher prices if their quality is to be retained. And when I say "much higher prices," I mean probably three times the original price. In this age of digital sound files, there is no more economy of scale from mass production of fine styli.

About re-tipping, we have to consider the difficulty of ensuring that the alignment of the diamond is as precise as possible, and that the rake angle of the original is duplicated. This is no small matter! And if the original tip has fallen off, does the re-tipper have the information that he needs, in advance, to re-create this angle?

Jan Allaerts, of course, does, since he made his cartridge in the first place. A small artisan business like this must charge a very high price for each transaction, but the amount that you quoted seems as hefty to me as it does to you.

I think that each of us has to come up with a method that is practical for ourselves. So, my first question about all this is, what is the minimum standard in a tip shape that will be satisfactory for our listening? The exotic "boutique" tips have definite virtues, but will we actually be able to hear their benefits?

I have cartridges and styli capable of rendering 50,000 Hz, and a cartridge engineer explained to me why this level of resolution is meaningful. But on the best recording of classical music that I own, will this resolution be musically better than a first-generation parabolic?  The difference between the 1st generation parabolic and a .2 x .3 mil elliptical is audibly significant to me. But beyond that?

What's even more significant is the issue of record wear, and this, to me, is probably the single most important consideration when thinking about whether to devote a very large amount of money to an advanced tip shape.

[jawaligt]

(...)

Normarh: these are made in Colombia and tend to come up on ebay. I ordered one of these for my Ortofon VMS cartridge. The stylus was crude (quite large with a lot of bonding material and a very very tiny diamond). But also, it was grossly tilted to one side causing a very audible distortion in one channel. I exchanged it for another one with the seller, but this one had the same problem. So I concluded his products aren't up to par and opted for returning it for a refund. So it seems Normarh is a brand to avoid

Just to illustrate the atrocious build quality of the Normarh styluses, here is an actual picture I took in order to show the seller why an exchange would be necessary. Needless to say the exchange stylus was almost as worse.



Seriously, what a joke. Can you imagine buying a new bicycle tire or car tire that's completely off center and crooked? And the manufacturers who produce them being in full business? That seems to be about the position we are at with most aftermarket stylii days.


I now have another manufacturer to add.

Micromel: not sure what country these are from, might be France? I have an Ortofon FF15 stylus replacement from them. The stylus tip is quite crude. Very large (probably about twice as long as the original tip) and with a lot of bonded material relative to a tiny diamond. Not sure whether it is elliptical, but if it is then the polishing is hard to make out under a microscope.
At least it was straight, but alas, when I mounted it to my Ortofon VMS body it wouldn't stay in and would 'pop out' after having been pushed in. I cured this with some shims, but when I actually put it down unto a record the stylus was sagging so much the cartridge was bottoming out almost continually. Changing VTF to as little as 1g didn't fix it. Neither did removing the tonearm damping or pulling the tonearm up higher. So either the suspension is shot due to age, or it was wrongly produced to begin with. So I don't recommend Micromel at all.

[richard]

Maybe we need a new "bad stylus" topic. And note that products from a given brand may not be the same from one year to the next. The owner may not care, or the company may change hands.

[GP49]

Maybe we need a new "bad stylus" topic. And note that products from a given brand may not be the same from one year to the next. The owner may not care, or the company may change hands.

Or the entire aftermarket stylus business may be a low-bid house of cards with cheaply made product, marketed by folks whose idea of "value-added" is the claims in their advertising.

RICHARD?  WHAT?  You want to write another book?   

A BIG book, at that?

Quite honestly I have little or no faith in aftermarket styli for any kind of exacting use.  The makers have no idea of what they are trying to duplicate, since they weren't there when the cartridge makers' engineers were designing the items, the assemblers were putting them together, and the technicians were quality checking the product to see how closely it came to the engineers' design parameters.  Even if a manufacturer were to take utmost care in consistently high manufacturing standards, he still may not be able to duplicate the performance of the factory stylus, simply because he doesn't know what he is trying to duplicate.  That's even assuming the stylus seller's goal is to duplicate the original stylus; most often it seems the real goal is to buy or make something cheaply that can sell for a lot.

[jawaligt]

Or the entire aftermarket stylus business may be a low-bid house of cards with cheaply made product, marketed by folks whose idea of "value-added" is the claims in their advertising.

Quite honestly I have little or no faith in aftermarket styli for any kind of exacting use.  The makers have no idea of what they are trying to duplicate, since they weren't there when the cartridge makers' engineers were designing the items, the assemblers were putting them together, and the technicians were quality checking the product to see how closely it came to the engineers' design parameters.  Even if a manufacturer were to take utmost care in consistently high manufacturing standards, he still may not be able to duplicate the performance of the factory stylus, simply because he doesn't know what he is trying to duplicate.  That's even assuming the stylus seller's goal is to duplicate the original stylus; most often it seems the real goal is to buy or make something cheaply that can sell for a lot.

That may be true. But the market for cartridges and styluses being what it is today, I think we as vinyl enthusiasts should try to find out what the 'diamonds in the rough' are, so to speak. Especially since many original stylii are either unobtanium or priced very excessively by the happy few who still sell them (Shure V15 styluses come to mind).

It would be really nice if we can find some manufacturers who do provide some measure of consistency and quality, to keep our hobby (wait, no, lifestyle :p) affordable and allow us to keep listening to those wonderful old cartridges in the future. But maybe it's a fools hope..

[richard]

An aftermarket stylus manufacturer once told me that if any of his needles didn't track properly, "just add more pressure."

Regarding affordability, the prices of old were largely set by economies of scale. Purchases of component parts (elastomers, for example) were done in quantity, with quantity prices. There was enough mass-production of sub-assemblies to keep prices very affordable, even for styli of very high quality. Imagine the precision of molding and material purity required to control the compliance of audiophile stylus "A" as opposed to audiophile stylus "B" in the same brand. And will the material retain its characteristics over the intended life span in the presence of air pollution and various stlyus-cleaning liquids?

One needle dealer sent me samples of his disco magnetic styli six years ago; they were pretty good. Five years later, their suspensions are as hard as bricks. When I mentioned this to him, he replied, "Well, you've had them for five years."

Shure wrote, a few years ago, that the reason why they're not making their best needles is because they can no longer obtain the materials. Yeah: and I can't find any air to breathe the way that I used to.

Let's say that we want to duplicate the precise characteristics of a certain ADC stylus. We'd have to pay to have an original reverse-engineered and then to look around for sources of the parts, not forgetting the custom-made elastomers. And then, we'd have to consider how many we could sell. Being able to concatinate models to reduce duplication might help (a headache with Shure).

In a case such as ADC, where the manufacturer is long-gone, costs to re-do the tooling from scratch will be steep. But in cases where the manufacturer still exists in their original countries and still retains their own tools, dies, data, manufacturing engineers, and hopefully, some factory floor space (Stanton, Ortofon, AT) there may be some hope if we wave enough money at them and give them enough hope of future business. Moving coils are in an orbit of their own.

Anyway, enough of this rambling. I think that the only salvation is if we're willing to pay three times the original price for needles produced in small batches. Group buying may offer some hope. Although Jico's prices have seemed pretty steep to me, they may be realistic.

I was just reviewing a late needle catalog, which revealed approximately six hundred basic stylus patterns. And this was just for the stereo years. So, obviously, some picking and choosing would be in order.