amuckart Report post Posted May 23, 2012 I've read a lot online here and in other places about how 331LR needles aren't made any more. I know Aaron Martin sell Chinese-made ones but I've seen some and haven't been impressed with the quality of the couple I handled. The shaft diameter is all wrong on the smaller needles (they're not necked down from 3mm wire). Given the difficulty of obtaining needles in a variety of sizes and my desire to keep my No.6 working for as many decades as I can I'm buying as many as I can get my hands on now, with the assistance of a very helpful local Schmetz rep. In the course of talking to them I've found that while the smaller sizes are almost impossible to get (180, for example is impossible to get from Schmetz any more) they are still manufacturing metric size 230 and the price from Schmetz is significantly less than it is from Aaron Martin or what people on ebay are asking for them. They also said that the minimum order for them to do a run of other sizes would be 8000 needles, which was actually a lot less than I was expecting. Admittedly that's a pretty huge outlay for a single person, but it's 80 people ordering a box of 100 each, and I'm sure there are more than 80 No.6 owners left in the world! Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
