Diamonds are not forever

[For The Love of Music]

What I’m not getting is the lower hours of cartridge yield, meaning performance.

My neighbor has a junk turntable in his unheated garage playing a stack of records that have never been cleaned, or brushed with a stylus that’s pushing 17 years that I can attest to and would guess another 10-15 on top of that.

When he turns it on in the summer time , and we are barbecuing and putting back a few beers, it sounds great for what it is.

While I’m curious to clean and play his records on my system, I just can’t. With this being said, I think his records would sound fine on my system if I did some maintenance.

I’ll keep things clean, maintained and pristine but do think you can get more than 200-500 hours from a cartridge.

I have about 80 hours on my new cartridge and people say break in is between 100-200 hours, if that’s the case I’m at 1.5-2.0 cartridges per year? I don’t think so, but it’s a “think” statement.

With this being said, I’m very happy with playing my setup.