You know that phono cartridge I said probably should be up for replacement by now? Of course you do. You've thought of nothing else since I posted of it.
Well, guess what happened yesterday. It broke! I put a record on the turntable and found the stylus (the part with the LI'L diamond or whatever the needles are made of) BENT. The poor little thing was turned at a right angle to the grooves!
I was actually able to nudge it back into alignment (more or less) just enough to check out this record for a minute. It didn't play well, but I heard what I needed to hear. And in the end, no harm done. It had probably gone many hundreds of hours over its expected service life, and I will do some research today on what to replace it with. It's not that I needed something new to spend money on, but let's face it, getting a new one that will probably sound fabulous will be kind of nice.