Removing stylus from Shure V15 Type III

Thanks, I think I have been overly intimidated by the word "gently".

Worst case is I might damage the old stylus - the cartridge body looks robust enough ...

@wturkey 

Hopefully someone didn’t glue the stylus to the cartridge to eliminate “resonances.”

Could only have been my Dad!  Too late to ask him.

More likely there has been some corrosion - the pin connectors have suffered.

@stereo5 

I am not certain whether I found this site before or after I discovered the Jico stylus, but contributors on this site confirmed for me that it would be worth having.  First time I tried to buy one, it was the same price as a complete Audio Technica VM540ML. Just recently one turned up a fair bit cheaper so it is headed my way on a slow boat from Japan.

@stereo5 

Can I ask what stylus shape you have on your AT VM540?  Thanks ...

The slow boat from Japan turned out to be a plane.  My Jico stylus arrived just a week after ordering, but I am not sure it is the one I ordered.  The order clearly states JICO 192-VN35E (SAS/B) but the packaging just says NUDE 192-VN35E and the inner cardboard sleeve says ND not SAS/B.

The seller says his supplier is certain it is correct.  Any idea how to check further?  I have not removed the stylus from its bubble-wrap.  I am protected by PayPal ...

@lewm 

Thanks for your help.

The more I think about this, the more I am convinced that 192-VN35E refers to the shape of the cartridge body and should specifically match the Shure V15 type III, which for me is correct.

The added complexity comes because Jico uses different materials for the cantilever (eg boron, sapphire, ruby), different shapes for the diamond tip (eg conical, elliptical, Shibata and SAS) and different bonding technologies (nude, bonded) to attach the diamond to the cantilever.

The suffix SAS/B means Super Analog Series with a boron cantilever.  Super Analog Series is a shape similar to Micro Ridge - could even be the same.

I am convinced that the seller got confused and priced incorrectly.  Now to convince him!

Cheers

@ghdprentice 

Thanks, that has been really helpful! 

Looks to me as if the NUDE styli are available in three variations: NUDE Conical, NUDE Elliptical, and NUDE Mono.  I am guessing the NUDE mono is for playing 78s and the other rwo have round and elliptical cross sections.  If so, they are quite different from the SAS shape, and are not what I ordered.

Emails will be going to Japan!

@lewm

@ghdprentice

I am convinced the Japanese vendor itsuwa-shop got confused about their Jico products. Their first response was "I checked with the supplier and they said it was correct ". I sent details gleaned from your posts plus screenshots. They wrote "Please open the return request". Nothing else!

Itsuwa-shop does have the correct part in stock. Its Jico list price is twice as much as the stylus they sent me. I will be pushing eBay to get the right stylus at the original price quoted, but don’t like my chances ...

I just got back to Canberra and made straight for my old Shure V15 cartridge.  The stylus slid out with a gentle pull just as you all said it would.  I have no idea why it would not do that earlier, but it there has been very low relative humidity lately.  Might be that or just my stupidity.

I do not have a Jico stylus to replace the original, though.  I did get my money back from Itsuwa-shop but they showed no remorse at trying to fob me off with a stylus worth half as much and claim not to have the correct stylus in stock.

@elliottbnewcombjr 

Thanks for that!

Yes, ruby is the same as sapphire except for the red colour which is caused by traces of chromium.  Sapphires can be every other colour except red.  Chemically they are aluminium oxide, a compound made from a couple of the most plentiful elements on this planet. Aluminium oxide is very hard, and saphhires are used for scratch resistant watch faces. It is widely used in the abrasive papers known as carborundum.

Boron is a very light metalloid, number 5 in the atomic table, so all other things being equal (they never are!) it should be the best for trackability.  While all these options are hard, they are also brittle, so I settled for an aluminium cantilever in my Audio Technica cartridge.

The background is that I inherited a Garrard 301 turntable with an SME tonearm (fixed headshell) and Shure V15 cartridge. I could buy a brand new Audio Technica VM540ML cartridge for less than just the Jico replacement stylus, so I did.

When a low price Jico appeared on ebay I thought it was worth a try despite swapping cartridges being a royal pain with the fixed headshell tonearm.  I am slowly improving the sound quality from the Garrard, so I don’t mind spending a bit more on it!  Trying to discover why they have such a following ...