Is it true that new stylus cartridges for CED players have been unavailable for a long time?
This rumor may have started when the Q & A Column in the January 1994 issue of _Video Magazine_ answered a reader’s inquiry by stating RCA had “…exhausted its stock of replacement styluses some time ago.” Well, a call to the GE/RCA Parts Department at the time revealed they still had a total of about 8,000 stylus cartridges in inventory. This RCA Parts Department no longer exists but all three stylus cartridge models are available via the Internet. Cartridges for the Hitachi models are difficult to come by, with some owners buying complete, working players on eBay just to get the stylus cartridge. Note that the manufacture of CED stylus cartridges ceased shortly after CED player manufacture came to a halt in 1984, and RCA only had a single keel-lapping master recorder from which all the masters used to shape diamond styli originated. If this complex machine has been dismantled, the technology required to manufacture these diamond styli no longer exists. The Stylus Cartridge Replaceme
