What is the “only 50 hours” cartridge meme?

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This one is a real gem and unfortunately causes much pain.

The “only 50 hours” cartridge use meme has been part of the hi-fi community for decades. Briefly, it’s where someone selling a cartridge dramatically understates the number of playing hours a cartridge has seen to get a better price at sale.

Typical phrases include: “Less than 50 hours,” “Only 50 hours,” and even “Only 20 hours.” Dishonestly misrepresenting the amount of use something has seen is the equivalent of rewinding the odometer on a car. This is a dog act and only the worst people do this. Thankfully, karma always gets them in the end!

Wear

Cartridges wear out, based on playing hours, the condition of your vinyl and other factors like stylus profile and tracking force. I’ve written more about stylus life in this FAQ.

A typical suspect cartridge-for-sale ad might read:

“Ortofon MC Jubilee moving coil cartridge for sale, like new, only 50 hours!”

50 hours is almost new for a premium line-contact type stylus of the type used in the MC Jubilee, perhaps only 2 – 3% worn. The really stupid part is that people are rarely creative in terms of their usage estimates. Folks invariably settle on the 50-hour estimate, no matter how ridiculous or implausible it is that every cartridge for sale has “only 50 hours” of use!

Actual wear and usage can be estimated, a specialist service we offer, and something I helped my customer with, in the case I’m about to describe. In this case, we got a dishonest seller banned from the platform he was selling on.

Example

Based on what I’ve seen over the years, one should probably use a 10x multiplier with many or even most cartridge listings. Take this example from a seller in Tasmania, advertising on StereoNet here in Australia.

This Ortofon 2M Bronze moving magnet cartridge, a transducer I’m very familiar with, was listed as having “Only 20 hours of use”, and in supposedly “excellent condition”. Yeah, right. One of my customers purchased it and asked me to install it on his Pioneer PL-71 direct drive turntable, after servicing the deck for him.

I realised after closely inspecting the cartridge that it was damaged and the suspension was at end of life, likely from misuse. It looked more like it had seen 200+ hours, perhaps many more, tying in with my 10x multiplier advice. It might look like this after 20 hours of ploughing my garden beds, but certainly not playing good, clean vinyl.

The seller’s photos were poor and/or misleading because they lacked the resolution, detail and angles needed to see the condition of this dud. Unhelpfully, the seller did not respond to my customer when he raised his concerns which already raised suspicion.

only 50 hours Ortofon 2M Bronze
The diamond looks reasonable after cleaning, but note the large internal crack in the stylus body and slumped suspension. This is a damaged stylus, far from perfect and only fit for the bin. Neither issue was mentioned in the listing.
only 50 hours Ortofon 2M Bronze
Note the accumulation of crud and twisted cantilever. This is after an initial clean – the cartridge looked worse than this before I photographed it! The keen-eyed will also note the collapsed suspension – the cantilever should sit noticeably higher than this. When playing a record, set to the correct tracking force, the cartridge body touches the record, so the suspension is worn/degraded, likely from wet playing, and this stylus is kaput.

This is easily fixable with a new $500 stylus of course, but that defeats the purpose of buying a cartridge with only “20 hours” of use. I find it hard to imagine the seller/s didn’t know about this and shame on them for passing this on if they did. The worst thing is that folks like this seller scream the loudest when someone sells them junk, but they are often quite happy to do it to others. Great.
only 50 hours Ortofon 2M Bronze
Note the residue, likely from wet-playing records or playing them damp and not very clean.
only 50 hours Ortofon 2M Bronze
After a little more cleaning I’ve removed most of that crud but this stylus still looks dirty. Again, note the large crack to the left base of the cantilever. I’ve worked with record players for nearly 50 years, scary I know. This cartridge is neither in excellent condition nor does it have only 20 hours of use.
img 2729
20 hours of use? Great condition? No. Again, note the crack and twisted cantilever. StereoNetAu doesn’t tolerate this sort of thing and I applaud them for it, so report anything like this if it happens to you. None of us needs to tolerate BS like this.

Update

The gentleman who sold the cartridge above with “Only 20 hours” of use has been banned from StereoNet Australia for not offering a full refund as instructed by their review team. Well done to the team for enforcing ethical behaviour and stomping on this.

The seller claimed the cartridge was sold to him in this condition. If true, this is also terrible, but it certainly doesn’t reduce his ethical responsibility. There is too much of this going on, unfortunately. We can always blame others, but ultimately we have to accept responsibility for things within our control. I’ll never understand why one wouldn’t immediately issue a refund in a case like this, but to me it indicates guilt.

Lessons

There is one very obvious lesson here: Don’t do this! Legitimate sellers will of course list cartridges with “only 50 hours” and various other low-hours numbers and many of these will be legit. Just know that near-new cartridges look near-new and one should be extremely wary of very low-hours claims.

Many cartridges that are damaged, with bent cantilevers, or with much higher than stated wear appear for sale on various platforms. Sellers often obscure details and many buyers lack the experience to know better. High-resolution inspection will, of course, tell the story though. We offer this service, as do others. Be careful and ask lots of questions, especially with much higher-priced “50-hour” carts.

My advice is to avoid trying to save a couple of hundred bucks on what is already a low-priced cartridge and just buy a new one. Oftentimes, trying to save a small amount of money ends up costing much more and that’s exactly what happened here.

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