Removing stylus from Shure V15 Type III

@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.

buy direct from JICO, scroll down in their Shure Listings

https://www.jico-stylus.com/shure-2/

NOTE:

"There is no difference at all between the VN35 SAS/B [e007444] and the VN35HE SAS/B [e007446] versions. Technically speaking, they are identical.We just use the naming conventions of the originals to make them easier for customers to find."

here’s where I read that RUBY is actually a Ruby COLORED Sapphire

https://orbray.com/en/product/jewel/product/cantilever.html

And here’s Obray’s chart of cantilever properties

and, a discussion of boron, sapphire, ruby

https://audiokarma.org/forums/index.php?threads/sas-cantilevers-boron-vs-sapphire-vs-ruby.890004/

@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 ...