Deepest sympathies Martin. I know the horror of that experience. I lost my Linn Karma exactly the same way.
If your reaction is similar to mine back then, you may be tempted to buy a cheaper cartridge as a replacement to minimise the pain from a repeat experience(?) If so, I would caution against that from my experience. I did exactly that, buying a Goldring Eroica to replace the Karma and it preempted my drifting away from Vinyl in favour of digital; a phase that lasted about 25 years before I got back on the Horse. Very glad that I’m back with the Vinyl now!
I see you have fitted Gaias to your turntable? Have you noticed any positive change in sound?
Reason of asking is Gaias are designed to deal with horizontal movement of speaker cabinets, ie front to back to front direction.
They are not generally considered as universal isolators.
Yes, those are GAIA feet under the Thorens. They work well, tidying up the sound and giving better definition, especially the bass. I initially had a custom GAIA stand made for my speakers. Liked what they did and got extra feet for the TT and other components, including the DAC and amp.
I read about the GAIAs in Stereophile, pointing out that although they were designed more towards reducing horizontal movement, i.e. speakers, they also worked on other equipment and Stereophile described the improvements they heard on non-speaker equipment.
In my case, my TT and amp are in a “Normal” cabinet not specifically built with isolation properties like a Fraim. So at a minimum, the GAIAs would provide isolation from cabinet induced vibration, and I did hear improvements as described above, maybe not as big as on the speakers but noticeable nonetheless.
For the DAC and amp the improvements were even subtler: better definition and lighter bass. I believe that is expected but I also suspect that I need to get the smaller GAIAs that match the lighter weight of these equipment for optimum benefits.
I briefly considered it as a passing thought but no I don’t want to down grade, I will just have to think of a better security system!
Incidentally I did have a Goldring Eroica before but from memory the DV is way better!
I think we have all went through the digital phase and have come back with renewed enthusiasm.
I think if you just adjust the body of the cartridge about 45 degrees to the right then it should still be ok Seriously, you have my sympathies - that would really have put me in a bad mood as well. Hopefully there is no damage to the tonearm.
They look very dodgy, especially as Rega go to great lengths to get their design just right. Does it make sense to put £10 wobbly things under a £4,000 turntable?