日本精機宝石工業株式会社JICO Record Needle SHURE VN45HE Replacement Needle neo SAS/s Sapphire Cantilever 192-VN45HE (neo SAS/s)

In 1981, when I bought a Shure V15 Type IV phonograph cartridge, I had no idea I was purchasing what would become a virtual cult item. The ensuing 35+ years first saw the apex of phonograph record development, followed by the decline and near-disappearance of "records" at the hands of the the new, low-maintenance, low noise compact disc, along with disc players whose sound quality was uniformly high, distinguishable from one another only by the most well-trained ears. Remarkably, as things sometimes happen, the phonograph record has made a comeback. Searches on web sites such as Amazon and Crutchfield reveal that in today's market, record players are not limited to low-end Victrolas. A surprisingly long list of mid- and high-end turntables and cartridges (from a few hundred dollars to $25,000 and $30,000) is available for the serious phonograph record fan. In addition to new cartridges, apparently many of us kept our old ones. The Japanese firm Jico makes stylus replacements for many of the old cartridges. Apparently, many of us cherish our old Shure V15's and Jico manufactures both a standard "spec" replacement stylus and several "Neo-SAS" versions, in which they've redesigned the hyper-elliptical stylus to track even more accurately than the original. The Neo-SAS/s is an upgrade that employs a sapphire shank. I use a modest system consisting of the cartridge and stylus mounted on a Dual 741Q quartz controlled direct drive turntable (1982), a Yamaha A-S501 integrated amplifier (2017), and Grado Prestige SR325 headphones (2018). The combination produces smooth, silky, clear sound through as wide a frequency range as I can still hear, with no tracking issues at 1 gram of force on high-dynamic-range recordings. I made my judgements using high quality recordings previously played very few times, since I would record these albums on tape and mostly use the tapes. My "test" recordings for this essay included Saint Saens organ symphony, Beethoven's 3rd symphony (Eroica), Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto and Love of Three Oranges, and Vladimir Horowitz Live in Moscow. It's probably pretty tough to find a Shure V15 Type IV cartridge these days. But if you have one, you CAN purchase a superb Jico stylus replacement. And, whatever cartridge one might have, whether legacy or new, when it comes time to replace the stylus, I would consider trying one of the Jico replacement styli. Jico appears to list an amazing number of styli on their website. And it must be said, service by LP Gear through the Amazon Marketplace was superb.

This stylus significantly improved the detail retrieval of the already exceptional cartridge!! All pros no cons.