How long does a Denon 103R cart last?

I bought my Denon 103r cart "slightly used" 6 months ago, I listen to the TT about an hour a day, when should I replace it? How do I know when it needs replacing?

 

Read the article at the bottom of the first post: The Finish Line for your Phono Cartridge- Stylus Wear by Mike Bodell

jeff

 

With proper setup, very clean vinyl in good condition and careful cueing practices you should be able to get between 800-1000 hours out of the Denon conical; it is not your run of the mill cheap conical stylus.

I ran a 103R for those kind of hours with no discernible loss of performance and certainly no damage to records before running retipped (with superior stylus profiles) 103R's for another 5-6 years or 6,000 hours after that.

 

I recently changed my Denon 103r, it had more than a decade of use, which varied quite a lot but was less than an hour and day on average for sure. When I took it off, we had a look at it under a microscope at the shop. It looked totally fine. I'm sure a host of factors, record condition, stylus cleaning, environment, etc., come into play.

 

How many hours were on it when it was "slightly used"? That could mean anything. Also is this a regular conical Denon 103 or was it retipped with a different profile?

 

~1 hour per day over ten years is still well over 3,000 hours. That's a lot for any stylus. What magnification was this microscope? You need 200X to see wear and even then it's tricky business, due to lighting, angles, etc.