Music and Vinyl: Jico Clipper with Morita stylus plays Sade, Pink Floyd

The Nippon Precision Jewel Industry Co - aka JICO - began in 1873, producing sewing needles. So it wasn't a great leap to making steel gramophone needles for 78rpm records - a business that then transitioned to microgroove styli.

With the gradual closure of many mass market cartridge businesses - for example Shure - the supply of original replacement styli dried up considerably and Jico were in a position to fill the void with their own replacement styli for many makes of cartridge. Not content with producing replicas, Jico developed their own products such as their Super Analogue Stylus - with a micro ridge type of tip that allows more complete contact with the record groove walls for more accurate reproduction. I have an SAS stylus for a Technics P-mount cartridge and have done a few videos with this.

The SAS stylus was (and is) very successful as a replacement for Shure V15 cartridges - in its time one of the very best on the market. The SAS range has been expanded with variants using different materials for cantilevers - boron, sapphire and ruby - each with benefits over the common aluminium cantilever.

Kotaro Morita

Jico craftsman Kotaro Morita has taken the cantilever material one step further by using various types of wood - and these styli are branded with his name. The Morita stylus I have is made of Ushikoroshi, or Christmas berry wood - though it does have another name as "Ox Killer". Jico explain more:

"The name “USHIKOROSHI” is derived from an ancient theory where farmers used this wood to make a nose ring for cows, or as it may sound cruel, they used this to slaughter cows. The wood itself is very strong and stiff. We have access to purchase limited number of quantities that have been selected by connoisseur of wood that had been naturally dried for more than 5 years. "

The wood samples are turned on a lathe - much the same as you might do to produce a table leg, but on a significantly smaller scale! Scroll down for Jico videos showing stages in the production of their various wooden cantilevers.

Jico's Clipper cartridge has a stylus mount compatible with Shure's M44 series, so it's own aluminium cantilevered stylus can be swapped out with any N44 variant - including the Morita series. In the video three tracks are played first with the Morita "Ox Killer", then the standard Clipper stylus for comparison.

The music is Paradise from The Best of Sade, a Malcolm Arnold English Dance, and A Great Day For Freedom from Pink Floyd's Division Bell album.