Jico SAS Stylus

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by acdc7369, Jun 9, 2011.

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  1. acdc7369

    acdc7369 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    United States
    I just bought a Jico SAS stylus for my Shure V15 Type IV. I have a couple of questions for those of you who have this stylus. How long should I expect the stylus to take to break-in? And approximately how many hours should I expect to get out of the lifetime on this stylus (assuming proper setup)?
     
  2. MMM

    MMM Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Lodi, New Jersey
    I found the Jico SAS on my VxMR to have a somewhat slow, gradual break-in.

    No idea how long yours will last.
     
  3. BigE

    BigE Forum Resident

    I have the same Ty IV / SAS set-up. It started out a little stiff and grainy and smoothed out/became more relaxed over time. It wasn't like I put an album on one day and my jaw hit the floor. I'm very satisfied with its performance on the test records and in general listening. Mine is set for 1.75 grams VTF and I run it with the brush down, which gives a nominal 0.25 gram lift yeilding a adjusted VTF of 1.5 grams.

    Eric
     
  4. acdc7369

    acdc7369 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    United States
    I don't understand the function of the brush?
     
  5. BigE

    BigE Forum Resident

    The brush is claimed to have several functions. First, it helps the tracking on warped records, kind of like a shock absorber in a car going over a rough road. Second, it sweeps ahead of the stylus to pick up dirt that the record brush left behind. I also thought that back when this product was first on the market that the brush helped drain static charge from the surface, but I not sure that ever was as effective as was represented. It really hasn't been in my experience.

    Eric
     
  6. MrRom92

    MrRom92 Forum Supermodel

    Location:
    Long Island, NY
    I have 2 of these styli. I need a third. One is am old one for a cartridge I no longer use, but the other got damaged due to poor alignment. Precise alignment is CRITICAL for this stylus if you don't want to destroy it and shred your records up too.
    I love the sound, you will too. Just double-check that alignment.
     
  7. dirtymac

    dirtymac Forum Resident

    Location:
    Exile, MN
    +1, though mine is on a M97eX.
     
  8. OcdMan

    OcdMan Senior Member

    Location:
    Maryland
    Don't count on JICO's brush to work as well as Shure's did. I wouldn't even use it. Shure's brush reduced infrasonic resonance due to tonearm mass/cartridge compliance mismatches and on warped records it helped reduce skipping. Cleaning and lessening static were secondary uses. On my Jico SAS, the brush seems to be "looser", for lack of a better word.

    The documentation I have from JICO gives a conservative estimate (IMO) of 500 hours for the stylus. Setup, alignment, and record cleanliness will really help with that.
     
  9. acdc7369

    acdc7369 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    United States
    For sure, thanks for the tip. I'm pretty anal about properly aligning the stylus/cart. I have a Technics Protractor for my turntable and the last time I aligned my cart/stylus, I spent about an hour tweaking it to make sure it was as close to perfect as I could get it. Of course, my sibilance problem disappeared immediately.
     
  10. MMM

    MMM Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Lodi, New Jersey
    I normally don't use the brush, with the Jico (and never did with the original), but there have been a handful of records I've had to put it down on due to edge warps that were too much for it to take on my arm without it. It was helpful with those.
     
  11. floweringtoilet

    floweringtoilet Forum Resident

    Location:
    Warren, RI, USA
    I disassembled the brush mechanisms of both an original Shure M97xE stylus and the Jico replacement. Like you, I noticed that the Jico seemed to lack the dampening quality of the Shure brush. It just kind of loosely flops around. Beyond serving as a stylus guard, it seemed pretty useless.

    After taking them both apart, I discovered the primary difference. The Shure mechanism has a small amount of grease at the internal pivot points that adds to the dampening effect. Using a toothpick I put a small amount of mollylube grease on the pivot points of the Jico assembly, reassembled it, and now it has the same dampening effect as the Shure.

    In general, I don't think the brush is at all necessary, but it can help when playing warped records. It is also good to have a stylus guard sometimes for piece of mind.

    None of this should be taken as a criticism of Jico, which I found to sound superior in every imaginable way than the stock Shure stylus.

    I also agree that, assuming you are playing relatively clean records, 500 hours is a pretty conservative estimate of useful stylus life.
     
  12. rushed again

    rushed again Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Jersey
    I've been using a Jico for about 6 months and also read 500 hours for playtime, which doesn't seem like much. Frankly I've never paid this much for a stylus before so I'm trying to make sure whatever it plays is clean. I'm actually keeping tracking of the playing time. :laugh: Don't know of a break-in time for a stylus.

    A couple of calls out here about my SAS......

    It minimized the symbalance issues I was having with a Classic Records Peter Gabriel lp.

    When I do a cd burn of a vinyl, I can crank up the input levels all the way and the meters don't red line. If I switch the Jico out with another stylus in the same cartridge, I need to cut back big time on the input levels to keep out of the red. :confused:
     
  13. MikeyH

    MikeyH Stamper King

    Location:
    Berkeley, CA
    Stylus life has been very variable for me. My MC's tended to need replacing at around 800 hours, but others have been great at several thousand. I've had 'good' styli last years on common cartridges, and 'bad' ones from the same cart go in just 18 months.

    This was during the boom times; I can only assume that outside high end cartridges the quality of tips has decreased somewhat (since very few seem to claim grain alignment and nude mounting)
     
  14. stuwee

    stuwee Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tucson AZ
    I have to ask, how are you doing this?
     
  15. rushed again

    rushed again Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Jersey
    I burn a cd from the vinyl and it gets loaded into iTunes with a Jico SAS ID.

    After an iTunes search of Jico SAS, total time shows at the bottom of iTunes.
     
  16. stuwee

    stuwee Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tucson AZ
    I see, very interesting :righton:, but with my listening habit's that wouldn't work for me. I always wondered why TT's didn't have a rudamentry time counter attached to the power switch for an hours log?
     
  17. carledwards

    carledwards Forum Resident

    I just ordered one for my Thorens TD320MKII. Love that V15V-MR! Great transcription setup.
     
  18. MikeyH

    MikeyH Stamper King

    Location:
    Berkeley, CA
    Some people with electronics expertise do this.

    However, wear is not linear or entirely predictable with time.. only that there will be wear.

    For a few years, I kept a 'tick list' of sides played, and used that. Interesting, but even that was a lot of work. A couple of companies made some 'click counter' devices that had a needle moving from green to red, IIRC Stanton made a 'stylus timer'. You pushed a lever each side.

    Any regular counter from an office store will do the same job with a little math.
     
  19. acdc7369

    acdc7369 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    United States
    the sheet that came with the stylus says a tracking force of 1.25 grams +/- 0.25 grams. Is that with the dynamic stabilizer enabled? Without? Or does it not matter?

    FYI I am using the dynamic stabilizer. With the dynamic stabilizer enabled, it reduces the effective tracking force by 0.5 grams. So Shure recommends setting the counterweight to 1.5 grams to obtain 1.0 gram tracking force, etc. Right now I have the counterweight set to 1.5 grams, which means I have 1.0 grams at the tip.

    So what I'm really asking is: should I increase the tracking force to 1.75 grams to get the ideal 1.25 grams at the stylus tip? Or do the JICO specs already take this into account (I should leave the counterweight at 1.5 grams or even reduce it to 1.25 grams)?
     
  20. MikeyH

    MikeyH Stamper King

    Location:
    Berkeley, CA
    The stabilizer needs an extra .25g to keep the force the same per Shure. Not sure if the Jico one even works (maybe it's just a brush?) as a damper.

    You might just want to set it on a test disk. Remember if you do flip it up and down for a reason, to adjust the VTF again. I found the damper to be ineffective.. it occasionally helped on a lightly warped disk.
     
  21. acdc7369

    acdc7369 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    United States
    Do you mean an extra 0.5 grams? So you think I should set the counterweight to 1.75 grams as the Shure manual indicates?

    I'm only using the stabilizer because it has a tendency to not stay up. I'd hate to set the tracking force assuming that the stabilizer was off, only to have the stabilizer randomly fall into the "on" position at some point and just eliminate 0.5 grams of tracking force without me noticing. That's a recipe for trashing records I think?
     
  22. MMM

    MMM Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Lodi, New Jersey
    No, 1/4 gram.

    I never had to use the brush at all (except for trying it out briefly) with the original Shure Microridge, and don't use it 99% of the time with the Jico. If the brush isn't staying up, something is broken/defective. On the rare occasions I've had to use it with the Jico, it was basically to deal with edge warp/ripple, and I didn't even bother messing up my arm settings by increasing VTF/etc. for the brief time I needed the brush.
     
  23. acdc7369

    acdc7369 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    United States
    The stablizer does stay up, but it's quite easy for it to get knocked out of place. I don't wanna take any chances.

    http://www.shure.com/idc/groups/tech_pubs/@global_managed/documents/webcontent/us_pro_v15iv_ug.pdf

    If you look on page 12, it says there's an 0.5 gram difference? I'm confused.
     
  24. MikeyH

    MikeyH Stamper King

    Location:
    Berkeley, CA
    It's been a long time since I had one. Half a gram sounds like a lot. I never did any analysis, but always found problems with the brush. In particular I can hear it! really annoying.

    My Shure ones always clicked up and stayed that way pretty solidly.
     
  25. MMM

    MMM Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Lodi, New Jersey
    Sorry about that! I was mixing things up with the 1/4 gram tracking force range Shure had specified for my cartridge not considering the brush. The +1/2 gram recommendation you noted to compensate for the brush absorption was correct.
     
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