The thread on this was closed but this is sort of a follow up.
I think I have an answer on the life of an SPU Royal N as mine has started to give some momentary distortion where I don’t remember any.
Just over a year of lockdown use, which has been fairly high, I’d say at least 2000 hours. I don’t think it’s lasted as long as my last 17D2 did but it doesn’t highlight the pops and cracks the way that did either. €670 to rebuild it plus sending it to Denmark. 17D3 going back into service for now while I get the SPU and a Proteus rebuilt.
As the common wisdom seems to be, also discussed in the old thread, I believe, that it might be damaging to the vinyl long before you hear anything, the question would of course be when that was.
If we could simply wait to hear distortion and this would tell us when to get it changed, the original question would have never arisen
Actually there’s another issue. I took the cartridge off last night and had a good look at it. It seems either I’ve been under biasing it (quite likely) or when I slipped a few weeks ago and sent it bouncing across a record I skewed the cantilever slightly. So, my estimated lifetime will be off by a bit.
